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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


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SIGNAL THOUGHTS 


Bthb LIBRARY I 
| OF CONGRESS 

I WASHINGTON! 


BY 


/ 


WILLIAM EDWARD HAGER, A. M. 

(Formerly spelled Hauger.) 



1893 . 






f 


Copyright, 1893, 

—by— 

William Edward Hager, 


CONTENTS. 


Page. 

Introduction. 5 

Do we Know or Believe as to the Existence of a 
God ? and, if there be a God, do we Know or 
Believe Him to be Infinite?. 14 

Power of Thought. 58 

Ideal Man. 63. 

Ideal Woman... 86 

Social and Financial Restlessness. 107 

Man’s Greatest Conflict Not with Man. 121 

Alone. 125 

True Worth. 134 

Is there a Personal Devil?. 138 

Dove. 152 

Philosophical Courtship (Plato and Eunice). 157 

Elements of True Success. 198 

An Objective Point 


210 
















PREFACE. 


Regretting that physical debility prevented 
a full mental exercise, I dedicate this work for 
what" it is worth to the reading and thinking 
public. 


Author. 



INTRODUCTION. 


Greatness of nature is to be studied, but sub¬ 
limity of soul expansion and mind development 
is to be experienced. The raising of the curtain 
of time reveals a host of mental giants noted for 
intellectual breadth and depth, and flow of heart; 
men who, having taken their mental and moral 
latitude and longitude in the sphere of thought, 
walked up and down the various alleys and aven¬ 
ues of truth until “ Eldorado” is written on every 
side and “ Eureka” on their mental horizon, where 
God, as it were, in compulsion withdraws Himself 
in order to show man’s finiteness and His infinity. 
Every phase of human nature has been drained; 
imagination has taken its frolic in the Iliad and 
Odyssey. Aeschylus, Socrates, Plato and Kant 
drank deep at the wells of philosophy; Spenser, 
Bacon, Wordsworth and Shakspeare have dipped 
their cups into the very springs of wisdom and 
brought forth sparkling gems of truth. Whittier 
and Tennyson, in poetry, have produced the high¬ 
est strains of “ Love Divine”. But the living too 
often perish at the graves of the dead. The pres¬ 
ent, looking at itself in the light of the past, 
exclaims, What more can be done! The lazy 
.and inactive mind has answered—Nothing. The 
5 * 



6 


Introduction, 


world says there is nothing original and often 
the thinker is inclined to say it is so—a doctrine 
that is a stepping stone to ignorance, an impedi¬ 
ment to knowledge—a premium on inactivity and 
a discount on energy. 

Truth in the concrete is not original; man can¬ 
not create or invent it; he can only discover or 
apprehend it. But truth as thought and experi¬ 
ence is original, and as original under the same 
circumstances to one mind as to another. Homer 
may have had an idea, and you, not knowing it, 
may have the same idea, but the fact that Homer 
had "the first apprehension makes yours no less 
original and no less effective in your experience 
and development. Instead of going to the “ Vati¬ 
can” of old, launch out into the boundless sea of 
All Truth and there delve for yourself, keep other 
men’s thoughts as helps, but become the shadow 
of no man. God has made you in His own image 
and not in the likeness of your ancestors. Be a 
man, by God’s help, in your own personality, and 
not a picture after the pen of the poet or the 
brush of the artist. So live that when you die 
the world can say a man has died; society feel 
that it has lost a member, the nation a citizen and 
the church a Christian. Paint somewhere, in glow¬ 
ing colors, your individuality, if not among the 
nation’s heroes, then in a more hallowed spot—a 
home. 


Introduction. 


7 


Man made in the image of his Creator, if a 
perfect image, is thereby made capable of seeing 
at least the image of all truth. Thought expands 
the mind and makes it great, holding it makes it 
grand, and retention produces character. Man 
naturally loves truth and beauty, and small is he 
who has not felt that great thought is great life. 
One noble aspiration craves another as love its 
own. We all have had states of mind that have 
pushed aside our own littleness and depravity of 
nature, veiled the past, brightened the present 
and illuminated the future until our finest sensi¬ 
bilities become aglow with the brightest possibil¬ 
ities of our better selves, and we are made to 
realize that there are seeds of nobility within us 
craving to become the flower of Divinity above 
us. Would man but live to his highest and best, 
this world would be a paradise of which the an¬ 
gelic host needs not be ashamed. The most 
menial soul has thoughts of its own, were it never 
to fall below them, that would give it majesty of 
mind and stability of character; why not so? 
Because naturally it is much more difficult for the 
mind to attain a new state than to repeat itself or 
fall to a former. Development is the fruit of 
effort; degeneration, the condition of inactivity. 
Had the field of thought the actual energy of the 
financial, the poet could soon sing of the dawning 
of the millennium and the unity of faith. The 


8 


Introduction. 


former needs encouragement, the latter regula¬ 
tion. 

What a distorted and sad spectacle must be 
that of the miser as he stands, in the light of eter¬ 
nal truth, with nothing but his millions to repre¬ 
sent his life’s offertory; his brightest ideas his 
silver, his purest and clearest conceptions his 
gold. Take away his pocket-book, and you take 
away the man—unfit for a beggar at the door of 
knowledge. On the other hand, what a beautiful 
picture do we behold in that old philosopher, 
Confucius, as he stands in the very shadow of the 
“white throne”, with his high ideas of life and 
lofty conceptions of duty—a prince within the 
very sanctum wherein the former was unfit for a 
beggar. Oh Millions! where is thy wealth? 
Where is thy power? Where is thy redeemer? 
Thou art good but not beauty; thou art strong 
but not strength—with earth thy mission ends. 

It is a virtue to steal a man’s fortune in com¬ 
parison to preventing him thinking. Nothing is 
great in this world but mind, and nothing great to 
mind but thought. It is true, mental progression 
is slow, irksome and often discouraging. Millions 
may be accumulated while ideas are being sought, 
and often the strongest ideas, like shadows of 
ghosts, produce within us a sensation of timidity 
and littleness. The mind is so expanded and 
strengthened by its search for what appears to be 


Introduction . 


9 


a great truth, that often in the reception it feels 
that it has but a little and insignificant idea—not 
worth the search. Be not deceived, it is not the 
notion that has decreased but the mind increased’,, 
not the littleness of the child but the greatness; 
of the mother as parent. Who would exchange 
a mind of ideas for a mine of gold? The ability 
to declare for self in the universal conflict of 
thought makes individuality, and individuality is 
the hope of the nation, the pride of the philoso¬ 
pher and the work of Christianity. It has been 
truly said that “you” can never be “ I ” and “ I ”* 
never “ you,” but if one truth can be truer tham 
another, it is truer that my character can never be 
yours and yours never mine, for by nature there 
is a stronger compulsory similarity in the “you”' 
and “ I ” than in the character of “you” and “ I.” 
I care not what be your ancestry, or how menial 
your birth, or how deplorable and lamentable 
your present condition, there is something withira 
—yourself—that is loath, that shudders, that dares; 
not, if it could, exchange itself for another. T 
would not exchange myself for you, be you prince,, 
baron, king or lord; you would not exchange* 
yourself for me were I clothed in wreaths off 
national glory. Interchange of character is oftem 
desired. We might be willing to exchange posi¬ 
tions, conditions, opportunities and even talent,, 
but not “ego.” “ I ” “I ” is all right; “you” “you" 


IO 


Introduction. 


is all right. The self-murder is not disgusted 
with his personality, it is his state and condition 
of which he expects to rid himself. The vilest 
sinner, at the foot of calvary, asks not that he be 
made a Peter or a Paul, but that his sins be for¬ 
given. It is the voice of immortality speaking 
unto itself through decayed mortality. “ Know 
thyself” was not spoken by a dead soul, but by 
one awake to the realities and responsibilities of 
life. 

What a sighing, raging mass of humanity is 
taking its transit from its orient to its western sky, 
and what are its thoughts? What are its aspir¬ 
ations? And what are its hopes? Shall we go 
ito our institutions of learning and ask? No! 
Shall we go to our missionary field? No! 
Shall we go to the church or State? No! Go 
to the herds of cattle, to the fields of ripening 
grain, to the banks of deposit and there you will 
find the eagerness of the eager and the zealous¬ 
ness of the zealous. Give us financial independ¬ 
ence, but not with it mental weakness and 
depravity; give us silver, but deprive us not of one 
silver thought; give us gold, but thereby with¬ 
hold no golden hope. A pure thought never 
ages but ever giving vernal tone and autumnal 
strength to the mind. We grow young, it is our 
bodies that become depleted and aged. If mind 
development is not youth, eternity is a crime and 





Introduction. 


11 

life a farce. We hate age, we abhor death; we 
love youth, we cling to life. Eternal life is writ¬ 
ten on the horizon of our vision. Time is youth, 
not age. America has more youth to-day, this 
her fourth centennial, than she had when Columbus 
first kissed her golden shores—younger to-day 
than she was at her birth; more activity, more 
energy, more thought, more pride, more power 
and more life, and less subject to death. See 
her, the continent’s wonder and the world’s pride 
—no pallor of death but all aglow with life. Age! 
Why! the mental world knows it not. If you are 
growing old in mind it is because your thoughts 
are too much in the back yard, in the cornfield, 
in the timber and in the wilderness; matriculate, 
change country and climate, enter the university 
of thought and bask your soul in the spring of 
eternal youth; catch step with that onward host 
to universal truth, where the general converges 
into the specffic, where position is altered and, in¬ 
stead of looking toward the focus against light, 
stand at the center, looking with the light. 

True, the wisdom of the wise often seems as fool¬ 
ishness to itself. But the world’s history, as it 
looks back through the spotted and glazed corri- 
ders of time until its only light is that of Egyptian 
darkness and the pen of legend its only historian, 
sees that it has grown, expanded and attained a 
stature undreamed of in its cradle or unprophesied 


12 


Introduction. 


by its most zealous enthusiast. So with man, he 
has grown, he knows not how, nor does he un¬ 
derstand how much. We, amid our broken vows, 
neglected opportunities and rejected privileges, 
possess a degree of mental strength absolutely 
incomprehensible to our childhood. With eternity 
as a condition and development as a factor, it cer¬ 
tainly does not appear what we shall be. In such 
light, impossibilities throw off their fetters, leave 
their seclusions, and step out into the full light of 
ease and facility, exclaiming, Here am I the beau¬ 
tiful and pleasing unexpected. Let no voice be 
hushed into silence by that fictitious—“nothing 
original.” Every one may have the address of 
individuality and the stamp of originality; vitally 
everything is “ I ” and nothing “you,” and every¬ 
thing ‘‘you” and nothing “ I.” It is relationship 
that makes us one and the same, but even the force 
of love is subject to the slightest dissension and 
leaves us as it found us “you” and “ I.” Life is 
within us; responsibility of relation between us. 

I am not you, yet our interest may be one and 
mutual. There is a tie that binds and a cord that 
holds individuals into a mass of humanity, where 
each individual can truly say I and humanity are 
one, and the foes of the one the foes of the other. 
He who thrusts the dagger into the cause of 
humanity, needs but look to his own heart to see 
the life-blood ebb away. The assassination of 






Introduction . 


13 


our beloved Lincoln and honored Garfield made 
pale the face of the nation, and the streams and 
rivulets of national life flowed crimson with their 
lifeless blood. The heart of the whole nation in 
sympathy was pierced by the traitor’s bullet. 
Many a lover has died from the separation of 
relationship of his sweet heart; the cord of affec¬ 
tion was stronger than the life within—result 
death. When the bond of fellowship and asso¬ 
ciation was broken and the sword of a broken 
law was drawn, Christ left the bosom of the 
Father and descended to earth, and beneath a 
keen edge and a piercing point laid Himself for 
our protection. There is a place where “spirits 
blend ” and interests do unite. We are one as 
individuals, one in originality not originality in 
one. Yet as a family, as a society and as a nation, 
we are all one, but we are “you” and “ I ” in ac¬ 
tion or passiveness. 



Signal Thoughts . 


H 


Do we Know or Believe as to the Existence 
of a God? and, if there be a God, 
do we Know or Believe Him 
to be Infinite? 

The question of the existence of a God is as 
old as humanity, and yet as new as a new-born 
babe in the kingdom of thought. In the dawn of 
history, and even in mythological literature, long 
before the primeval forests of thought were even 
glazed, a God was contemplated. Individuals 
have doubted the existence of a God, but nations 
never. Every development of history has had 
its religion, and its god or gods. When strength 
of mind could not see, weakness wandered in 
darkness; when reason saw no God, credulity 
erected an image and worshiped at its shrine, for 
worship it must—conceptions of Deity too indefi¬ 
nite for outline and too vague for expression— 
perfectly sincere but sincerity adds no ray of 
light. As the child in its infancy knows not its 
mother, so mind in its weakness knows not its 
Creator; as the babe directs its first steps toward 
its mother, so mind in true development seeks its 
God. 






1 5 


The Existence of a God . 

As to the varied, imperfect, and incongruous 
conceptions of Deity recorded in early history, 
there is no need of astonishment or surprise. 
Turn the mind with a watchful eye in upon itself, 
and it will see upon its own walls an outline of all 
history. Society and individuals are more pro¬ 
gressive in a day than were the ancients in a 
decade or even centuries. Where antiquity stood 
a halt for ages, the individual of to-day passes so 
rapidly through the same state of mind as to 
scarcely realize it,—safely ushered through the 
most credulous period long before the alphabet 
of knowledge is taught. The mind’s laws of de¬ 
velopment are independent of its self—of will— 
independent and as stern as fate as to its state of 
progression, but wholly subject to the will as to 
their operation in time. The mind in order to 
attain a certain mental state may have necessary 
progressive states through which to pass, but it 
is left to choice if they will ever be passed, or 
how long it will remain in the one, or how rapidly 
escape the other. The finger of derision and 
scorn needs not be pointed from the pinnacle of 
the nineteenth century toward the hazy orient, as 
the arm that holds it and the brain that nerves it 
are of oriental birth. Soul is soul: soul ever has 
been soul: and soul ever will be soul. Prime¬ 
val man and the modern began in the same state 
of mind on the same level. The only difference* 


16 


Signal Thoughts. 


the one was left to grope in darkness, save the 
spark of life within, whereas the other was in¬ 
structed through modern methods and tutored by 
the light of ages; the credulity of the one was 
cultivated, whereas in the other it was suppressed 
and reason fostered. The present generation is 
greater in results and more advanced in life, but 
not necessarily greater in life. Frequently, man 
of antiquity brushed back the debris of ignorance, 
throttled superstition, and hurled forth those 
mighty javelins of eternal truth until their spear¬ 
like points pierced the present century, revealing 
philosophical thought that can never be forgotten 
-—a morality not surpassed by the decalogue; and 
a religious sentiment equal to Christianity. And 
yet the ancients were very rude and imperfect in 
their ideas of customs, ways and manners, as a 
rule. Society had not the charms, and family 
circles the loveliness they now have; weakness 
was manifested in every phase of life, and espec¬ 
ially in their religion. But it is no surprise, 
because in the greatest things the greatest errors 
are to be expected, if errors are to be found. The 
child is less able to control a locomotive than he 
is to run a play-cart; if he attempt the former he 
will make a greater and more serious mistake 
than if he attempt the latter. It is in the higher 
abstractions, farthest away from sight, that mind 
makes its most fatal mistakes,—lost as it were 







The Existence of a God ’ 17 

with plumage inadequate to fly, and entangled in 
its own misconceptions it leaves the material 
world to seek in vain a place to rest. 

The religions of antiquity were peculiar in 
point of reason, in philosophy, and in theology. 
But individuals, societies and even communities, 
within our own clime and of the same kin, have 
peculiar conceptions of Deity. It is not rare to 
see a man of to-day with an Egyptian, Assyrian, 
Chaldean or Grecian theology. In fact, some of 
the professors of Christianity have not as clear 
conceptions of God and truth as did Socrates, 
Plato or Confucius. The ancients, in religion, 
put to shame many individuals living in the most 
refulgent rays of this intellectual and Christian age. 
But there is yet that same uncertainty as to a God 
and the same misconceptions of a God,—though 
not so prevalent or erroneous in nature, as in an¬ 
tiquity—yet it does exist in the very light of this 
enlightened age. There are those who, in the 
van of the ages before Christ, were far in advance 
of the rear of the nineteenth century. Mankind, 
as a general rule, has always been honest in its 
search for a God; more mistakes are to be laid 
at the door of ignorance than lies at the door of 
knowledge; more errors in darkness than sin in 
light. And well it is so, as the former may have 
its mercy justly, whereas the latter must have its 
just reward. 


i8 


Signal Thoughts, 


The question naturally arises, can we know, or 
must we believe as to the existence of a God?' 
and, if there be a God, can we know or must we 
believe Him to be Infinite or no? These 
questions ought to be solved if solution be 
possible. If there be a line of positive truth to 
follow or a keystone of belief to look to, let us 
have it. 

Preliminary to an argumentative discussion of 
these topics, a brief review of the ancient religions 
will be advantageous as to conceptions of Deity. 
What idea did they have of a God? and with 
what degree of knowledge, and how or why was 
it maintained? 

It readily appears that it is very difficult to 
represent properly the ancient mind in religion, 
as we have to judge of their conceptions through 
their mode of worship—easily seen that their con¬ 
ceptions were very imperfect, but exactly as to what 
they were is the point of failure. It is much more 
difficult and uncertain to properly represent mind 
in faint and mystified conceptions, than in strong 
and positive ones. The altars of religion are vis¬ 
ible, the ideas that built them and the thought 
that sustained them, invisible; religion they must 
have, and religion will have an expression. In 
pre-historic times, in the stone-age, when man 
lived in mounds, religion had its forms of worship, 
but as tp the ideas and conceptions of Deity back 





The Existence of a God. 


19 


of them, we know absolutely nothing. Not until 
civilization shone above the Egyptian Pyramids, 
was mind able to give anything like an intelligent 
expression as to its conception of Deity. The 
Egyptian idea of a God is clear in some respects 
and in others so indefinite and erroneous that one 
can scarcely believe such opposition of opinion 
could dwell in one people, much less in one mind. 
The priests believed in one invisible, all powerful 
and self-created God. Invisible and all powerful 
were advanced thoughts, self-created though 
absurd was good thinking for an Egyptian, and 
some people of to-day are trying to explain it. 
But this invisible God they said created his own 
members, thus lesser gods — triads of gods— 
Osiris, Isis, Horus, each had its place as god. 
The Assyrians were polytheistic, believed in 
grades in gods; Ashhur was the great God who 
ruled supreme over the other gods. Buddha be¬ 
lieved in supreme power but not in supreme 
personality. The Medes had a conception of 
personality in their God—a step of importance. 
The intelligent Greek was polytheistic in belief; 
nature was full of deities. Everything had its 
saints. The Roman deified the powers of nature; 
the Roman child had some forty gods, a god over 
appetite, over thirst, a god that led him out 
and a god that brought him in,—each supreme in 
its sphere. Antiquity, as a rule, was polytheistic 


20 


Signal Thoughts. 


in belief, thus giving room to diversified, indefi¬ 
nite, incongruous and erroneous conceptions of 
Deity. It simply shows the meanderings of mind 
unguided in its search for first principles; it was 
honestly in search of First Cause—a place to be¬ 
gin. Thales, the great philosopher, said it was 
water; he drew his conclusions from the fact that 
the river Nile had done much. Anaximenes said 
air was the first principle. Heraclitus gave fire 
as the first principle. Anaximander, chaos. 
Pythagoras, number; and some even attributed 
it to a vacuum. Thus we see what appeared to 
them to be absolute truths, and yet when mind 
was making its feeblest struggles, skepticism had 
no stronghold. 

Now the question arises, why and how did the 
oriental man make this religious effort? Then, as 
now, physical eye-sight was the first door ajar to 
truth, and he, as you or I would have done, 
rapped at its portal. We see that there are things 
about us, so saw he his surroundings. We see 
that those things are possessed of action and 
motion, so saw he action and motion. The great 
question to him was, From whence came these 
things and this action? He began to reason, but 
absorbed in eye-sight and more inclined to theism 
than atheism he deified; mind itself is too much 
of a god to be naturally atheistical. There are 
but three possible states of theism,—pantheism, 








The Existence of a God. 


21 


polytheism, and monotheism. The former is the 
most imperfect and rudimentary,—all in nature, 
nothing in spirit or personality, thus naturally 
producing calmness and composure of mind, 
whereas polytheism leads toward personal dis¬ 
composure, restlessness, and superstition of the 
blindest type. Pantheism would be the superior 
were it not that polytheism is a step—rather a 
blind stumble toward Absolute Personality. True, 
the Egyptians believed in one invisible and self- 
created God, but their conceptions of his mem¬ 
bers as lesser gods destroyed what little mono¬ 
theism could have been in it, and self-creation 
implies existence, and it is the origin of existence 
sought. 

The pantheist said, “There is but one God 
because he is all.” But pantheism is a physical 
impossibility under the circumstances; it excludes 
accessions, results and products, as results and 
products are not the same as the producer, if God 
is all and all is God, there is nothing as results 
and products, or else they are parts of Himself. 
It might be said that it excludes results and pro¬ 
ducts but not the idea of growth, that what we 
term accessions, results and products are simply 
growth. In other words, God is growing and de¬ 
veloping Himself. If so, He is not infinite, growth 
and development exclude infinity, as that which 
grows is by its very nature lacking infinity, and 


2 2 Signal Thoughts. 

growth itself is simply a result produced not by 
itself but by an agent. Primitive mind, believing 
in pantheism, worshiped at the shrine of impossi¬ 
bility and expected to receive a blessing from its 
imaginary god. It merely shows how easily the 
mind in honest search of truth is led astray. No! 
not led astray by its own hand or any other, 
rather lost in the field of infinite power, but nighted 
in the arms of infinite love to awake in the morn 
in infinite likeness. 

Polytheism is void of much of the absurdity of 
pantheism; it is not a physical impossibility. 
Though not consistent with thought and unity, we 
need not be surprised in the ancients holding such 
an idea. Imagine yourself, in town or city, with¬ 
out an idea as to how long or what work is 
required to construct a house; you cannot tell if 
one man as carpenter built them all or each house 
had its individual builder. So the ancient mind 
looked at one thing believing it to have a god, 
and then at another believing it to have a god. 
apparently not thinking of the possibility that it 
might be the same god back of both. Unity in 
nature was not studied, or oneness of will which 
is absolutely necessary to every perfect physical 
construction run by laws subject to will. 

Polytheism is a doctrine that gives but little if 
any hostile difference of opinion, therefore history 
dwelt a long time in that state; in the main ele- 


The Existence of a God. 


ment it was simply nature worship. The ancients 
saw action and attributed it to power as the ulti¬ 
mate; they were too much of the visionary and 
not enough of the psychical turn of mind, looking 
too much to the external world and not enough 
to the internal man to be definite in belief or 
positive in knowledge. Ancient religion was a 
mixture of various, imperfect and isolated thought, 
—quasi monotheism, dualism and nature worship, 
yet defective in theism and dead in morality, it 
exhibited some strength, f biit at is best it was very 
weak. Their course is too dividing, too serpen¬ 
tine, and leading too often into the wilderness of 
confusion and superstition. We cannot begin 
where they left off, yet we have no criticism to 
offer, rather wreaths of glory and monuments of 
honor to their honest and noble efforts. In our 
discussion of this subject, we must leave them, but 
can never forget them. 

What says the light of the nineteenth century 
as to the existence of a God? Let us turn on the 
brightest light of reason and see if the darkness 
cannot be dispelled and a halo of certainty put 
about this all important subject. Scriptures tell 
us of a God and most of us with reason believe 
them, but that is belief, and we are not handling 
this subject with biblical means; we are after the 
positive knowledge allowed us; we ask nothing 
more and want nothing less. Whence came this 


24 


Signal Thoughts . 


world, this universe? What a question! But 
mortal man can ask it and go in search of an 
answer. Every man has a moral right to state 
his positive experience and honest belief. I do 
not believe in the philosophy of Ingersoll, but I do 
believe in Ingersoll freedom; better give reins 
to mind and let it run wild than forever chain it 
to a contracted, distorted and rotten idea. Open 
up the kingdom of free thought and brotherly 
love will soon reign over it. Be free to express 
your opinion and be not chagrined at criticism, 
for development may make you your own critic. 
Be ready to strike at the philosophy of men if it 
be not consistent with your ideas, but be slow in 
declaring men insincere. 

It is claimed by Messrs. Tyndall and Spencer 
and other materialistic scientists that the universe 
is run by an eternal unconscious force that never 
had a beginning and will never have an end. 
The basis of their theory is the correlation and 
conservation of forces or energies. Mr. Tyndall 
says that it is one of the greatest scientific dis¬ 
coveries of the nineteenth century. Mr. Spencer 
declares it to be a great truth, but admits that it 
has not been proven by induction. But there are 
truths positively known not revealed by induction, 
—self-evident truth and such as are intuitively 
perceived need not wait for induction. Finite 
man cannot expect to prove all things by indue- 


The Existence of a God . 


2 5 


tion; first principles and origin are beyond it, but 
it is the only sure path for the materialistic scien¬ 
tist to travel and by correlation and conservation 
of forces they expect to overthrow personality of 
origin. The materialist is bold in evolution as to 
effects, but he is slow to talk of origin. If the 
doctrine of the greater being evolved from the 
lesser be true, follow the theory back and it irre¬ 
sistibly leads to infinite littleness, backed up by 
nothingness—blank—exit materialist. Evolution 
as to growth and nature ordered is proper but as 
to origin improper. 

There is an antecedent and subsequent corre¬ 
lation of forces as forces, but dependent upon some 
initial power. The most intricate mechanical 
contrivance of man is dependent for its operation 
upon initial power—thus perpetual motion is 
impossible. Correlation in itself is of no effect, 
and if conservation fails, correlation must cease to 
that degree of failure. 

Now let us look to physical nature for confirm¬ 
ation or denial of conservation. The magnet 
loses its magnetism, light its brilliancy, heat its 
intensity and gravatation affected by distance. 
The kernel of grain dies in order to give forth a 
tender sprout; the acorn, aided by circumstances, 
sends forth a mighty oak, but one is its limit. 
The muscles of the body if unexercised lose their 
strength, if used to excess they become exhausted. 


26 


Signal Thoughts . 


It is not a fundamental principle of nature to give 
and yet not lose. It is a scientific truth that when 
a natural body imparts force it must lose to the 
amount it has imparted. There is nothing ulti¬ 
mate in force itself, and if force is all there is back 
of the universe it is simply a question of time as 
to its exhaustion as a source. Absolute conser¬ 
vation is impossible in nature outside of person¬ 
ality. And yet absolute conservation must exist 
somewhere, and it is in Personality. The mind 
can give a thought and yet retain it; can give 
instruction and even be instructed by it. Mind 
possesses absolute conservation in its sphere, but 
it does not cover the sphere of absolute conserva¬ 
tion, and yet it does show the nature of conser¬ 
vation of Absolute Personality. It might be said 
that absolute conservation exists in the sun, but 
if all heat outside of the sun were destroyed, the 
sun by the very nature of its heat would impart 
heat by radiation to the cooled bodies and thus 
lose heat to that extent and the universe become 
cooler. Nature never changes, the heat of the 
earth is the heat of the sun as to nature, it is ex¬ 
hibited in the atom the same as in the molecule. 
If conservation by nature existed in matter, it 
would be found as to its nature in the lowest 
phase of nature as well as in the highest, in the 
smallest quantity of matter as well as the greatest. 
The child's mind possesses the nature of conser- 


The Existence of a God ’ 


2 7 


vatioo just as well as does the philosopher’s; 
acting personality in whatever degree of pow¬ 
er it may be, exhibits conservation,— it is its 
nature. 

If the theory of unconscious force running the 
universe be true, it is chance, as unconsciousness 
Is unintelligent and anything without intelligence 
back of it is chance, and chance is unthinkable 
and absurd. We know nothing of it in the sphere 
of positive truth and have no right to set it up in 
the sphere of hypothetical speculation, Force as 
a ruling element is contrary to physical science. 
Every force in nature has a power back of it; 
force is a manifestation of power, it is power 
acting and nothing more. 

Our materialistic friends are not quite ultimate 
in their theory. If they would have said, the 
universe is run by an unconscious power, they 
would have gained one step but not the last. 
Unconscious power would be no solution, as that 
would be blind power, and that is chance. In¬ 
stead of chance, force, power or any other thing 
of the like being the originator of the universe, it 
is Personality. 

Everything in the social, commercial, and 
Christian life is attributed to personality; social 
evils to personal wrongs; commercial indepen¬ 
dence to individual enterprise; Christian progress 
to personal faith. Now if every thing in practi- 


Signal Thoughts. 


cal truth and experience must be attributed to 
personality, why abandon it in the sphere of 
generalization and speculation? Why deny it in 
the abstract when admitted in the concrete? We 
know we are personal and have a personality, 
and that the smallest personality as originator and 
ruler is greater than the greatest force or power. 
If there be no personality outside of ourselves, we 
have no Creator. We are not self-created, nor 
are we the creatures of chance, force or power, 
for we dominate over them. We are higher than 
they, and the lower cannot father or lay claim to 
the higher; darkness cannot produce light, and 
unconsciousness cannot breed consciousness.. 
Thought, that great absorber of space and anni~ 
hilator of time, has its personality, and unexplained 
personality, like thought, goes back to its person¬ 
ality. Creation is but a Divine thought expressed; 
thought exists as a means through which all 
things flow; it is as a mediator between personality 
and matter. There is but a thought back of 
man’s creation, and God is its author. Man’s 
intuitive sense of moral obligation is born of God; 
consciousness is linked to the bosom of the 
Father. Man is personal and has intelligence 
and free-will, and his God cannot be less; He 
must be personal and have intelligence and free¬ 
dom; blind force cannot produce personality, 
blank nature cannot give forth intelligence and 


The Existence of a God. 


29 


fate cannot give birth to freedom. We have a 
personal God, a personality, a God rules the 
universe. The regularity in the cycles of the 
seasons, the perpetual drawing down of the cur¬ 
tains of darkness and the opening up of the 
windows of light for the last six thousand years 
of man’s chronology speak not of chance, or un¬ 
conscious force, but of God. Just as force must 
have power behind it, power must have person¬ 
ality back of it; the contrary is no more thinkable 
or less experienced in the one case than in the 
other. Power speaks in clarion tones of its sub¬ 
jection to personality. 

Let man study his own physical organism and 
he finds that there is not a motion of the muscles 
or quiver of the nerves wholly independent of 
will. Reflex action may be so highly cultivated 
.as to act for the time without the brain’s sanction, 
but it received its education from the mind. The 
most complicated athletic movements are indi¬ 
rectly subject to will. The body, arrayed in its 
nightly costume, awaiting the arms of Morpheus, 
is under the same subjection. While the mind 
acts, the body cannot sleep, but let the mind wholly 
cease its activity, and in an instant the eyes close 
and the body is snatched away in complete rest, 
subject through law to Cxod, and in the morning 
you cannot tell when or hovr you fell asleep, for 
you cannot tell when or how God takes possession. 


30 Signal '1 houghts . 

Man knows nothing of Divine chronology save 
when his own is with it. The mind is not able 
to put itself to sleep; it cannot sleep in an effort: 
of the will, not until it is dead to the laws of its. 
own activity can it be subject in sleep to God. 
Two personalities cannot do the same personal 
act; sleep can be driven back but not defeated.. 
Sleep is not so much a state of the faculties of the 
mind as a state of personality,—state of esse . 
The ego does not repose in the same manner 
that the body rests, the latter could never awake 
of itself, whereas the former can awake from 
within as well as from without. The ego—mind 
—can be so trained that it will arise at a certain 
time in the night, or a pain in the body will bring 
it to its position of control. The relation of body 
and mind is not destroyed by what we call sleep* 
but we find a living personality behind a body ap¬ 
parently totally inactive to it. And physical 
defects and deformities, and even mental and 
moral tendencies may be traced back through 
ancestral lineage to personal volition. 

If there be one thing in the universe that 
appears void of personality, it is insanity; God 
never willed it and man hates the thought, and 
the sight of it brings personal dread and horror. 
Man in volition desires to sin, but he does not 
desire insanity, and yet it does exist in the wild¬ 
est and most excrutiating forms—frantic as chance* 


The Existence of a God. 


3i 


stern as fate, and as ungovernable as nature in 
itself; such a horror-stricken monster that volition 
is loth to lay claim to it as its own. Insanity is 
here. And does man and God stand back in 
utter surprise and blank astonishment and wonder 
from whence it came? Is it a surprise to both? 
Does it come from whence they know not? Is it 
chance? Is it blind in its origin? What is 
insanity? Infinite personality may act wildly but 
it cannot become insane; nothing but finite per¬ 
sonality can become insane. Finite man is by his 
very finiteness in relation to nature not subject to 
his volition, that is, he cannot change nature, its 
mode of action or time of action is outside of him 
and will go on in its course whether he goes in 
his or not; it is obeying the eternal decree of God 
and man sees that it does obey Him. God 
created the nature of insanity and man evolved 
the act that leads to it. It is not a surprise to 
God or even man. Development and progres¬ 
sion are the exponents of nature and yet devel¬ 
opment and progression maybe retarded, hindered 
and even changed into a retrogressive course of 
development and progression, but as exponents 
they are ever the same. Man is in vital relation 
to such nature, he is not compelled to mental 
development but if he does not follow it, he must 
go with its opposite, mental derogation. It is not 
the design or nature of mind to forever remain in 


32 


Signal Thoughts. 


one mental state; volition can hold it, but it is 
subject to the working of the laws of such a state; 
keep the mind in one state without change and 
cessation, connected with worry and sorrow, and 
insanity is simply a question of time. 

The human mind knows this to be a fact and 
it sees that great monster—insanity—coming, and 
it even prays God to deliver it from such a bond¬ 
age. But God cannot unless He would change 
nature, as it were the very nature of nature. 
Man must remove himself from natured insanity 
and he will become sane. Nothing but thought 
will cure purely mental insanity and that thought 
diametrically opposed or at least differing from 
the thought that produced it. The businessman, 
with his thousands, fails and as a result of worry 
from loss he becomes insane, but if on the day of 
failure he had turned his mind to philosophy or 
some other sphere of action and taken pride in it 
and made it an objective point he would not have 
known insanity. Volition—personality—is back 
of insanity just as it is back of everything else. 
Infinite Personality produces nature and yet un¬ 
affected by the nature it produces; it makes Him 
no greater or no less. Finite man chooses 
nature and makes it, as it were, his own, but 
in his choice the law of nature is in nowise 
affected. 

Let us search for the personality of a dream, 


The Existence of a God ’ 


33 


you never chose to dream nor chose while, in the 
act of dreaming, or ceased by the act of choice, 
and yet the personality is as distinct knd real as 
though the state were brought about by direct 
choice. It is I that dream and not you, you and not 
I. I never dreamed of being you, or you of being 
I; it is impossible. Personality has a state of esse 
in dream as well as any other mental state. It is 
impossible to have a state of mind without direct 
co-personality, but in dream we find a state of 
mind without direct volition and yet direct per¬ 
sonality, which shows that personality can exist 
without the exercise of direct will, but will power 
cannot exercise without direct and co-personality; 
will power is a faculty; personality an ego with 
faculty. 

It might be asked, why is not the power of will 
disturbed in dreams? The soul is in vital relation 
to the body and dreaming is caused by some 
physical disarrangement affecting that relation 
which affectation affects the mind, and if mind is 
affected from without it must assume some men¬ 
tal state, just as though it were action from will, 
but it is more of the nature of instinct and less of 
intuition, and will is not excited or aroused be¬ 
cause will power is not related to the body, but a 
faculty that is always independent of the body,— 
not necessarily affected by it. And even dream¬ 
ing may be produced by effects of previous 


34 


Signal Thoughts. 


mental states, as well as by physical causes; 
it is a mental state in which will, an impor¬ 
tant faculty, is not co-exhibited as acting, 
but it is no less personal. God could have 
created personality with less power and not have 
affected personal identity. The deaf and dumb 
are no less personal because of deprivation of 
speech and sense of hearing; it is I to them— 
just as much of personality but less of power in 
personality. Depth or power of faculty does not 
increase personality, yet it individualizes and 
characterizes. Man is as much a personal being 
as God Himself; personal identity can not be in¬ 
creased or diminished, 

Personality as it exists in dreaming originates 
nothing; it is impossible to dream of anything 
new, it is simply ideas that have previously been 
in the mind, there may be different arrange¬ 
ment or relation, but nothing new in itself. 
There is not only a direct personality in dreams 
but indirect volition, for every dream is com¬ 
posed of thought that was once subject to 
volition, as much so as effort can make them or 
suggestion receive. Personality can exist with¬ 
out the exercise of volition, but a product cannot 
be created without the exercise of will. In our 
own sphere of action there is an identity—a self 
—a personality—an ego as distinguished from 
everything else, and even from its own psychical 


The Existence of a God. 


35 


state, not constituted but constituting. Mr. 
Spencer sees this ego, but necessarily how won¬ 
derful he must see it in order to be true to his 
philosophy; he says, “ Successive impressions 
and ideas constitute consciousness; that the 
principle of continuity, forming into the whole the 
joint states of consciousness, moulding and mod¬ 
ifying them by some unknown energy, is distin¬ 
guished the ego: That the entire group of 
psychical states which constitute the antecedent 
of the action, also constitute himself at that 
moment.” This is Mr. Spencer’s ego, first im¬ 
pressions and ideas make consciousness, then 
consciousness as states by the working of some 
unknown energy constitute the ego. Notice the 
order, first—idea, second—consciousness, and 
then ego. The lesser producing the higher, but 
that is true to evolution, and Mr. Spencer is true 
to evolution in mind as well as in nature. But 
idea supposes consciousness, it is unthinkable 
to have an idea without consciousness, and con- 
ciousness presupposes an ego; consciousness 
without an ego is unthinkable. Instead of Mr. 
Spencer’s order of idea then consciousness and 
then ego, it is ego followed as it were by con¬ 
sciousness and idea, that “unknown energy” that 
Mr. Spencer refers to as moulding and modifying 
the joint states of consciousness as to produce 
ego, is the ego itself moulding and modifying 


36 Signal Thoughts. 

consciousness; consciousness is a state of the ego 
not only to the state as a state but fundamentally 
to the state as a state of being. True as matter 
must have position, so personality must have 
state, material position to be position must occupy 
space, a psychical state to be state must have 
consciousness; changing matter from place to 
place does not alter the question of place itself, 
changing the psychical state alters not conscious¬ 
ness as consciousness. I say I am, that is a 
psychical state in which being is the cognition as 
being, that is consciousness of being, or the ego 
knowing itself to be. 

I say I am sick, a psychical state in which 
sickness is apprehended as state of the ego, but 
one in which state of being is not affected, elim¬ 
inated or destroyed by the psychical state of sick¬ 
ness. 

I say I am sick with the disease called typhoid 
fever, a psychical state in which the consciousness 
of the idea of typhoid fever is exhibited, while 
the state of sickness or being is not in the least 
affected and it is not those states joined as the 
distinguished ego, but the ego claiming them all 
as its present own. Matter cannot increase the 
space occupied nor can two particles occupy the 
same space at the same time, but ego is not so 
cramped in its psychical states; it can change 
states without wholly losing former ones, take on 


The Existence of a God. 


37 


new states and yet retain previous ones, as to- 
states, sickness includes being, but the one does 
not constitute the other, any more than two as 
consecutive or as one increased constitute the ego. 
We do not hold that the mind can have more 
than one state at a time, but that the ego is as 
much in one state as in another and instead of 
being an aggregate of proceeding states it aggre¬ 
gates states. It is useless to say that Mr. Spencer 
has failed in his attempt to elucidate ego, as 
experience opposes it and the mind, watching 
itself in its attempt to follow his argument, expe¬ 
riences the failure of Mr. Spencer properly repre¬ 
senting his own experience. 

Mr. Spencer raises another very difficult ques¬ 
tion, he says “ I cannot even think of a series of 
states of consciousness as causing the relatively 
small group of actions going on over the earth’s 
surface, etc., etc. Even to a single small set of 
these multitudinous terrestrial changes, I cannot 
conceive as antecedent a series of states of con¬ 
sciousness—cannot conceive it as causing the 
hundred thousand breakers that are at this moment 
curling over the shores of England. How, then, 
is it possible for me to conceive an “ Originating 
Mind,” which I must represent to myself as a 
series of states of consciousness, being antecedent 
to the infinite of changes simultaneously going 
on in the world too numerous to count, dispersed 


38 


Signal Thoughts\ 


throughout a space which baffles imagination.” 
In other words, how are we to attribute the action 
in the physical world or world of matter, to mind? 
How can the mind produce this action, or how is 
matter to proceed from mind? What is the state 
of mind that can speak matter into existence? 
We have not the slightest idea as to what is the 
state of mind in producing such results. We 
cannot tell and probably never will be able, but a 
thing may be and we not experience or even 
comprehend it, and yet be able to see that it is 
so. Man has so united things as to make some 
things almost wholly new. The mind is able to 
give facial expression, caused and altered by 
psychical states. Peter took the lame man by 
the hand and through faith cured the bodily de¬ 
fect. Christ turned water into wine, and from 
five loaves and two fishes He fed five thousand, 
and from the remains were gathered twelve bas¬ 
kets of fragments. These things came from 
personality, and was not the last creation, for 
bread cannot increase by nature; it was not a 
development of the loaves into more loaves, but 
an act of creation. And the first was preformed 
through finite personality. I do not understand 
how these things were done but if they were, 
could not God have spoken and the world—the 
universe—through the mighty fiat of His word 
have taken on existence—personality has done it 


39 


The Existence of a God . 

all. Move the hand or the finger, how easily the 
mind does it, so more easily God can move a 
universe of matter. In our own organism we 
see a relation of physical action to mind and 
mind the mover. Man physically is a world 
of matter and mind the god of its action; he 
is not only an image of God, but images 
God’s thoughts, and God’s actions. Of course 
man cannot create, but he can come within one of 
it, he can think, and thought independently pro¬ 
duces its effects. 

Again Mr. Spencer says, “Amid mysteries 
there will remain the one absolute certainty, that 
he is ever in presence of an Infinite and Eternal 
Energy, from which all things proceed.” Now 
“ Do” exists only as it is conceived through and 
in the faculty of the mind; it is psychically do, 
materially, is; energy is conceivable in the “ do,” 
but not in the is. There is nothing in the material 
world that says energy, it speaks only of energy. 
Motion as existing in the physical does not exist 
in the mental and yet energy cannot be denied in 
personality. True there is what is termed kine¬ 
tic and potential energy in physics, but not in an 
absolute sense. Energy as energy cannot exist 
outside of personality. And when Mr. Spencer 
gives energy as the beginning, if he only knew it, 
he is out of matter, force and law, and in personality. 
Personality is the initial; it has power within itself. 


40 


Signal Thoughts . 


The fact that there are mysteries incomprehen¬ 
sible surrrounding the existence of a God is no 
contrary evidence as to His existence. We may 
know that He is and yet be absolutely ignorant 
as to His existence. We are not attempting to 
account for God’s existence; it is enough that He 
knows it. We are simply glazing a few stones of 
that mighty bulwark of certainty that enthrones 
His existence. If we could account for God’s 
existence, we truly would be as gods. 

Finite man ought not expect to account for 
infinite existence, when he cannot explain his 
own; before expecting a halo of light about 
infinite personality, let him clear up the mystery 
concerning his own. 

God has not only declared himself through 
power and nature, but in revelation. Moses said 
unto God, “What shall I say unto the children 
of Israel? when they ask the name of God,” and 
God said unto Moses, “I am that I am. Tell 
them that I hath sent you unto them.” There 
could have been no stronger exposition of per¬ 
sonality; God in scripture, as in nature, has 
simply revealed Himself without any elucidation 
of His existence. He is revealed as eternal, but 
that gives no light to the mind in the way of 
accounting for existence; it explains nothing, it 
leaves us where it found us. The question as to 
God’s existence is the strongest line of demarka- 


The Existence of a God . 


4* 


lion of frnity and infinity; mind can never hope 
to span it; life’s expansion throughout all eternity 
will not be able to comprehend or even appre¬ 
hend it. Though we see as to the existence of ai 
God, we admit the great mystery of that existence-,, 
and if because of it the materialist has left the 
sphere of personality for that of force or power, 
he encounters a no less mystery, and one unthink¬ 
able and absurd on the side of origin as well as 
difficult of comprehension to the mind. More: 
can be expected of intelligent personality than of 
blind force. The theist admits with the atheist 
that there is something unknowable as to the. 
‘‘Absolute,” but that that something exists not irt 
the realm of matter, force or law, but in the sphere 
of personality and known to Absolute Personality. 
If self-creation were possible it would have taken 
form in personality. He has failed in his thought 
who says in his own heart, there is no God. 

Every thoughtful individual can see there must; 
be a personality back of all things, and yet ai 
personality may be back of each and not neces¬ 
sarily the same one back of all. Every element, 
of nature might have been created by a separate: 
and distinct personality; or God could have: 
created one to do certain work and another to do^ 
certain other work, all working in harmony of 
will, whereby a perfect physical organism could; 
have been brought forth and properly controlled. 

4 


42 


Signal Thoughts . 

But with freedom of will, one might have rebelled 
and we would have had a failure in the physical 
world as well as in the moral. As there was 
apostolic rebellion, it is not likely God would have 
pursued such a course. Unity in nature speaks 
of Oneness in creation, and revelation teaches it. 
It is but reasonable to suppose that everything 
was originated from One. 

Now the question naturally arises. Is this God 
infinite or not? Is it possible for a contingency, 
circumstance or condition to arise that could 
defeat His power? Is this, our God, able to do 
anything, or is it possible that His will might be 
with His creatures and yet He be powerless to 
support or redeem them? Is God infinite? must 
we believe him such? or can we know? Look 
circumspectively. Does the slender blade of 
grass declare infinite power? No! it speaks of 
power, but not of infinity. Does the grain of 
sand? No! it speaks no louder than the blade 
of grass. Does the huge mountain crest, tower¬ 
ing over the very clouds of heaven declare 
infinity? No! they give no audible voice, nor 
ithe universe one syllable of Almighty Power. 
The resurrection of life hymns no song of praise, 
•even yourself—ego—must hold a silent tongue; 
•each and all are dumb, they declare only the 
glory of God; they are not criterions by which 
to judge .infinite power; they speak of wonderful 



The Existence of a God. 


43 


power but not infinite. Eternity itself is no 
criterion, for a being might be eternal and, as far 
as we know, not be infinite. There is a standard 
by which to judge infinity, and it is a sure test. 
A being is finite if there be anything that it can¬ 
not do because of lack of power; a being is 
infinite if there be nothing it cannot do because 
of lack of power. Two particles of matter cannot 
occupy the same space at the same time; it is 
said God could not make two hills without a 
valley; a thing cannot be and be at the same 
time. These are impossibilities, but not exhibi¬ 
tions of want of power, rather demonstrations of 
the working of power. 

As the impossibility of the negative of person¬ 
ality was established, so infinity can be maintained. 
Establishing the impossibility of the negative 
sustains the affirmative. Now, suppose the being 
contemplated is not infinite, then there is a possi¬ 
bility of something being done it cannot do, but 
the very fact of such a possibility implies that 
there is a being or personality back of it, for we 
have seen chance impossible and that personality 
is back of all things, so that that possibility and 
condition must have its originator and^so must 
every other. The same road that leads to first 
cause and infinite power leads to First Person¬ 
ality. 

Infinite power is banked upon Infinite Person- 



44 


Signal Thoughts . 


ality. We are thankful we are blest in having an 
Infinite God. Another question, Is it possible to 
have more than one Infinite Being? We answer, 
it is impossible to have at the same time more 
than one infinite being. It may be asked. What 
is to be done with the trinity? We are not 
discussing the trinity. It is simply the impossi¬ 
bility of two infinite beings existing at the same 
time. Supposing we have two great Beings 
working harmoniously, doing a great work; for 
the sake of argument suppose it to be infinite 
work. All is going well, but one takes a turn of 
mind, and then what ? They tell us infinite beings 
never change, that may be, but can they? Some 
think God cannot sin; He cannot in His good¬ 
ness, but He, in infinite power, can if He so 
chose. If he could not, He would not be infinite 
in power. God has the power but not the will. 
Supposing these so-called two Infinite Beings to 
get at enmity, which is possible so far as infinite 
power is concerned, and they attempt dethrone¬ 
ment. If the one is overcome He is not infinite; 
if neither one can control the other, neither is 
infinite, as there is something neither can do 
because of lack of power. Duality exists in 
nature in the correlative form only. In itself it is 
impossible, as unity is the basis of nature and 
upon it complexity built, so do we find Oneness 
of personality and from One others in correlation 


The Existence of a God. 


45 


spring. One personality can have two consecu¬ 
tive mental states and they be similar or diametri¬ 
cally opposed, but two personalities cannot have 
but one mental state. There is but one God, and 
the human soul bowed in reverence ought to "be 
thankful it is so; one shrine in which to worship; 
one throne to supplicate and one God to adore. 
Tritheism must wing its flight as a fable and seek 
its burial in the mythological cemetery of the 
past. The trinitarian must stop his song of three 
in one and reconcile his ideas to reason and 
revelation. Scriptures do not teach trinity, even 
by implication, in the light that the mass of 
# humanity sees it Test men on their conceptions 
of trinity and it is found that but few have any 
definite ideas and the few differ widely; even the 
Christian world is unsettled, divided, uncertain 
and often misguided by misconceptions of reve¬ 
lation. There is such a thing as “ Divine Nature ” 
revealed in the Bible, but we are not discussing 
the trinity; it is the idea of the trinitarian and not 
trinity that properly comes in this discussion. It 
has been shown that at the same time but one 
infinite being can exist, thus at once driving the 
greater number of trinitarians from the field, but 
not all; there are those entrenching themselves 
within the Godhead, believing their position 
impeachable, attribute infinity to each person in 
the trinity. We understand that the conception 


46 


Signal Thoughts . 


of Godhead is divine nature and it is so defined 
by Webster. The trinitarian claims that this 
“Divine Nature” is one and that there is within 
it three persons spoken of, viz.: the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost, implanted, materially speak¬ 
ing, in this Godhead; that these three persons 
working harmoniously, backed up by this “Divine 
Nature,” are one and infinite and thus capable of 
doing all things. One in nature, mark you, and 
three in person, taking all three in nature to make 
one in personal effect, so that in personal power 
each is one third or some fraction of one, that is, 
each in itself is finite, as two infinite beings are 
impossible; but three finites can not make one 
infinity; all finity put together will not make one 
drop toward infinity, and it cannot be said that 
this “Divine Nature” is back of these personalities, 
for personality is back of all nature as it is 
greater than nature outside of personality. This 
does not refer to official trinity but to trinity as 
origin. True it is that personality may be and is, 
as in man, in relation to nature, beyond its 
control, but nevertheless the excessive nature has 
its personality, and it simply shows that there is 
a person greater than we; and so it must be in 
the so-called trinity. If the one personality is 
not able u en esse' to control the nature or power 
in its relation, the excess must be attributed to 
one of the others until infinity of personality is 


The Existence of a God. 


4 7 


reached and then divinity of nature must take a 
subordinate relation. The certainty of a God 
being enthroned and secured by the impossibility 
of the contrary, His infinity is no less securely- 
established. There is a God and, what is more 
important, He is an Infinite God. 

The previous discussion of infinity referred to 
power only, as to God’s infinite wisdom, knowl¬ 
edge, justice, love and mercy, that is entirely a 
different question. It takes us out of the sphere, 
of positive truth into relative. We know Godl 
can be perfect and infinite in these attributes as; 
well as in power, or else He would not be infinite; 
but as to Him so acting in wisdom, knowledge,, 
justice, love and mercy is another question wholly 
independent of power, and one that is known only 
by belief. We cannot know to the impossibility 
of the contrary that God is acting infinitely in 
these attributes; we can have only belief or dis¬ 
belief. But we see exhibited a remarkable degree, 
of wisdom and knowledge; nature unified, the 
general within the specific, economy of conditions,, 
greatness in small things, simplicity and com¬ 
plexity united and yet simplicity the ruling- 
element; much in multiplicity exists as sample 
forms in everything; the firmament of the heavens, 
declare wisdom and knowledge, the sun speaks 
of it by day and the stars by night; every letter 
in nature is volumes for perfect design; man in 


48 Signal Thoughts. 

his own attributes, with eyes closed and lips 
sealed, expresses no uncertain sound, but let him 
•open the portals of mind, and let in the light of 
heaven: see him as he bursts asunder the seals, 
;and hear him speak forth in words of wisdom of 
the Wonderful Wisdom of God. Solomon 
prayed for it and Christ taught it. Everything 
speaks of it affirmatively-multiplied evidence that 
God is acting in infinite wisdom and knowledge 
and none for disbelief. 

It is possible that God is not even acting 
justly toward man and we not know it; possibly 
iHe has made a failure of the universe simply to 
work against us; maybe He has created man for 
His own glory—but who would thus declare. Ex¬ 
perience does not thus teach or revelation preach. 

The human soul from the very depths of its 
intuition feels that it is a prodigal and not worthy 
-of the name of the son of God, and desires rather 
to be called a servant of rank rebellion. It is the 
^imperfection of society and the love of gain and 
not God, that is unjustly treating man. The 
ihonest, penitent, seeking, intelligent and enlight¬ 
ened soul, in its proper relation to God, never 
feels or thinks of demanding justice, but ever in 
its humility and strength begs for mercy. But 
what of that velvety and golden attribute in which 
the best quality of God’s life is expected to shine 
forth in brightest light—that of love. 


49 


The Existence of a God. 

Charging God with lack of power is a grace in 
comparison to the indictment of withholding 
infinite love; it is like a mother disclaiming her 
offspring or a father calling his natural child a 
bastard. There is no ease, no rest, no composure, 
no tranquility and sensation like that of love; 
deprive poetry of it and the poet dies, take it out 
of Christianity and Christ has died in vain. And 
yet it is possible and we not know it, that God 
is refusing infinite love; He may have refused 
His affection and sympathy in the hour of bitter 
affliction; He may even have substituted hatred 
for love. It is possible, but oh! God keep back 
the angels of death for a moment, give this hand 
strength and this soul time to express its belief 
to the contrary. It is possible but not probable 
or reasonable to believe it, no shadow of evidence 
declares it or the negative affirm. But every 
voice of nature, every tongue of revelation and 
every honest thought of man sings of God's 
infinite love. The very instinct of animal life is 
full of it, the birds of the air, the beasts of the 
field, and even the savageness of the roaring lion 
obeys it. Yet only man is capable of true love, 
and he loves to love, as it were; he loves for the 
sake of loving, and he is but the image of his 
Maker. 

How must it be with the God of love? He 
would be cruel to Himself to refuse love to His 




50 


Signal Thoughts . 


creatures for he can love nothing else; self-love 
is impossible and that which cannot reciprocate is 
not lovable. As the rays of the sun diverge 
until the whole universe is wrapped in its warm 
embrace, so the love of God shining out from the 
“Eternal Throne” envelopes all humanity and 
seals it with the affectionate chord of infinite love. 
God so loves humanity that He lays down eternal 
truth and allows man to knowingly and willfully 
trample it in the dust; for man’s sake He has put 
illuminated revelation upon revelation and then 
declared it His own—doing more than mortal 
man could have asked or thought. God so loved 
the world that He gave His only begotten Son; 
love so lacerated His bosom that no balm less 
than that of the blood of Christ could heal it. 
Christ lived earthly, was dragged from place to 
place, was scourged, spit upon and hanged upon 
a tree, that God’s love might be made more mani¬ 
fest. 

When humanity condemned its own, God so 
loved it that He condemned it not; when man is 
sick, tired, disgusted and hateful to himself, God 
still loves him; when man holds a rebellious 
attitude, cursing and blaspheming his Maker, 
even then God loves him. The malefactor on 
the cross feeling that justly he deserved death, 
said unto Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou 
comest into thy kingdom,” and Jesus said unto 


The Existence of a God . 51 

him, “Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise.” 

Is not that infinite love? reason sees no nega¬ 
tion or reservation in it, love itself says it is 
enough, and the soul of man wafts itself with the 
stillness of the gentle zephyrs to the throne of 
God, singing of infinite love. Christianity is 
safely resting upon it and the sinner sincerely 
believes in it. The few that lay the charge of 
minus infinite love at the foot of calvary will one 
day take it away in sorrow and bitter repentance. 
No accusation of lack of love to the God of love 
can be sustained in any court of reason, and let 
the thought that would abate one jot or tittle 
from infinite love be paralyzed with hatred and let 
belief arise and put on its brightest armor and 
carry the banner of love everywhere. 

Having wandered up and down the flowery 
garden of love and seen no petal lacking, but 
every rose blossoming with the fragrance of eter¬ 
nal love, let us rap at the portal of mercy and see 
if the porter is there. 

Is God merciful? Does hardy justice go in and 
let tender mercy bleed and perish on the thres¬ 
hold? or does justice remain out doors and send 
mercy in ? Man being finite and living in infinity, 
is liable to make mistakes, and if laws are vitally 
related a violation of one is bound to work at 
least natured death somewhere. Man physically 






52 


Signal Thoughts . 


is vitally related to the material world, and if that 
relation is vital in the sense of a violation work¬ 
ing natured death, and man being finite acting in 
infinite relations and not fully understanding this 
correspondence of laws, will make mistakes and 
with error disease must come and absolute death 
follow disease, or else physical misery is eternal. 
Death is not necessarily caused by sin, it may be 
the result of design; the biblical report of death 
is “he died full of years;” it gives the name of no 
disease. Law and nature are unrelenting, op¬ 
pressive and know no mercy; sorrow, distress, 
misery, wailing and lamentations are their foot¬ 
prints; God Himself can show no mercy in nature, 
as it would be acknowledging imperfection on 
His part. 

It takes the stern hand of eternal justice to 
run the universe. The human body is fated to 
die, even in the lap of science, if continued in its 
present relation. Mercy is an alien to it, saying, 
depart, I know you not; not as it were, until 
mortality shall have put on immortality is the 
voice of mercy heard, and then God speaks it in 
person as it only can be spoken. The immortal 
soul lives because ofjustice from God and allowed 
its redemptive state because of His mercy. Man 
by sin gained the knowledge of rebellion, but lost 
his innocence; mercy allowed a restitution of 
innocence and the forgetfulness of sinful exper- 


The Existence of a God. 


53 


ience. Eternal justice upon the cross of calvary 
bled but died not; it was satisfied for it saw its 
own resurrection. Christ died unjustly for the 
sins of the world, but justice outside of personality 
suffered not, the material world did receive no 
effect, laws did not change their designed nature, 
Christ Himself died not, neither was there any 
change in the moral world. It was not death, it 
was life in different relation. 

While God in nature does not and can not 
know mercy, He can show mercy and pardon by 
the redemption of personality from the effects of 
transgressed law. Man in sin is not dead, but 
alive to the nature of law transgressed; he is in 
God’s dominion as securely as before transgres¬ 
sion; whether in the lowest depths of hell or in 
the highest heaven, Lo! God in law is there,. 
Everything in nature is in subjection to law; 
personality is the only free thing in the universe. 
Man is as a God-Lord of humanity, yet as to 
nature He is in subjection, he can alter disposition, 
temperament and even His nature, but not the 
nature of nature. He is not under law and 
nature but in them, and in them He has freedom, 
born in them life changes them not and death can 
not remove Him from law. 

Transgression of physical man is painful and 
speaks of absolute death, of mind, sin which is 
greater than pain or death* 



54 


Signal Thoughts. 


There is transgression and sin that has no pain 
but that speaks of immortality. The mind in sin 
has no pain, there is no such a thing in experi¬ 
ence as a mental pain; in mind violation works not 
pain but moral depravity. God might have created 
a physical body wherein violation of law would 
not have produced pain, but He could not have 
formed a moral nature wherein transgression would 
not have worked moral depravity. Through the 
sensation of pain man is aided, through his own 
will in maintaining the natural state of the body, 
so through the nature of sin he is aided in follow¬ 
ing the divinity of nature. 

God did not create sin, but He did design its 
nature and allow its possibility ; His law is no less 
back of sinful effects than back of righteousness. 
“ He is All in All,” in man’s creation God recanted 
nothing and gave up nothing, but allowed man 
a sphere of action. 

God’s laws are as omnipresent as He Himself— 
Heaven has them, Christ so declared it and he 
will be deceived who expects all rest and no law 
there. Pain and sorrow may be eliminated, but 
nature, law and activity in the highest will be 
revealed ; man will be no less human and God 
no less his God; man in his best State feels 
jubilant over the grandeur of his own life, and if 
he has been created by the Hand of infinite wis¬ 
dom and love and, by his own sin, lost his heritage, 


55 


The Existence of a God . 

—nothing less than infinite mercy would forgive 
his prodigal life and own him in the kingdom of 
originality and design. 

Man possesses positive knowledge, and yet he 
is left much to relative truth ; belief and finity are 
one. Man ever has, ever will and ever must be¬ 
lieve ; he can not escape it, though he grow in 
infinite truth throughout all eternity. But what 
man believes at a certain time, he may later learn 
to know ; positive knowledge is ever drawing be¬ 
lief into the background and belief widens its 
scope. Positiveness like man is limited, belief 
like God is unlimited ; positiveness is the centre 
of man’s life, belief the circumference, and from 
the stability of the centre may be drawn a circum¬ 
ference without the variance of an arc or the in¬ 
clination of a sine, making a solid sphere of 
eternal truth ; changing the pivotal point breaks 
the circumference, taking away positiveness as 
the initial of knowledge takes away faith. Often 
in the most serious and intricate recesses of life 
no ray of light is seen save that of the star of 
faith, afloat on belief but anchored to certainty— 
drifting but not lost—sometimes wrong but not 
forever. Development is the only true and thor¬ 
ough teacher; error flees before it like Satan be¬ 
fore God. 

And yet man in belief must be watchful of every 
external sound and every internal murmur, or else 


5 $ 


Signal Thoughts . 


he will lose sight of his positiveness and declare 
himself a skeptic or an agnostic. Belief is the 
brightest star in the constellation of morality and 
religion ; it is in mans sphere to be there for¬ 
ever—finity can not be without it, and infinity can 
not be with it. The greater part of man’s truth 
is simply seen as evidenced and not as truth seen. 

Man sees mostly by means of evidence, God 
never; in Him all evidence is begun and absorbed 
into Himself. 

Yet belief enlarges, strengthens and brightens 
man’s views so that his thought perfumed with 
the very essence of Divinity, stands spotless be¬ 
fore the throne of God. Take away belief and 
you rob man ; take away faith and you destroy 
him ; belief is not man’s ghost, it lies not in am¬ 
bush to deceive him, it is not an enemy but a 
friend to be tried and trusted, for it may be so 
well founded, so well evidenced that practical life 
is satisfied and the human soul willing to bank 
eternity upon it. 

It is the bridge that spans the “Jordan” and 
beneath it roll the waves of skepticsm and doubt; 
it is safe for the transition of an immortal soul. 

Infinite Intellectuality to be just must give time 
to finite intellect, but morality of finity can make 
no such demand upon morality of Infinity, for 
finity is as capable of moral perfection as Infinity. 
Perfection of quality does not depend upon ma- 


The Existence of a God. 


57 


tured quantity. The acorn “ en embryo” is no 
less perfect than the towering and gigantic oak. 

The innocence of the cradled child is equal to 
the purity of the angelic host. Morality, not the 
philosophy of nature, is man’s absolute sphere, 
direction of action not force of power determines 
character, virtue lies not in intellect itself but in 
the trend and state of intellect. 

God and man are not in a state of opposition, 
one is not infinitely above and the other infinitely 
below—it is relation. In capabilities, in faith and 
in hope, man is finite—infinitely infiniteness. God 
and man are so close that creation has dared not 
step between them, there nature is void, but it is 
not a chasm, not an abyss, but a mighty sea of 
humanity vesseled and freighted with thought 
divine—nature out, communion in. Knowing that 
there is a God, and that He is infinite in power r 
is not that opening up the portals of All Mighti¬ 
ness and letting into the soul a flood of Infinite. 
Light? 

The soul of man, born, nourished, educated, 
tutored, cultured and inspired and again nourished' 
in its birth, educated in its nourishment, tutored', 
in its education, cultured in its tutelage, inspired' 
in its culture and accepted in its inspiration, verily 
lives that great truth, that sublime thought, that 
heavenly prayer—“ Our Father who art in Heaven, 
hallowed be thy name.” 


58 


Signal Thoughts ,. 


POWER OF THOUGHT. 


Human history had its orient in the garden of 
“‘Eden-, ” Adam by his first intent wrote the in¬ 
scription to the wonderful volume. It is some¬ 
thing that had no existence before man and will 
©oniiniue no longer than he is allowed freedom of 
choice. It is a sphere from which God has with¬ 
drawn His supreme right and left it as optional with 
man to say if that right shall be endorsed or re¬ 
jected. Humanity since its beginning has flown 
■on incessantly, at times clear as crystal, again its 
^clearness is darkness, it deepens and widens, it 
ilowers and narrows, upon it are tides of joy and 
\water-spouts of personal contortion ; it is marked 
iby wars, revolutions and insurrections—at times 
a chaotic condition of rebellious forces. It is 
more variable than natural history ; its laws are 
not as constant as the law of gravitation, and yet 
they are natural. As God is directly back of all 
•of nature’s laws, so there is a power laying back 
•of human history ; a power from which it flows, 
that moulds and fashions it, that gives its laws 
and controls them. This is the power of thought, 
the power of our God and the thought from man 
—the two combined governed by man produce a 
human .product. When active it makes of him 



Power of Thought. 


59 


the noblest being of earth ; by the use of it he 
glorifies his maker, blesses humanity and perfects 
himself. 

The man of thought has ever stood above his 
fellow-man, not that he was born wiser, but that 
he became wiser, not that he had more faculties, 
but that he was more active. Activity was a light 
to barbarism, by it Aristotle and Plato preceded 
their age and dwelt as it were many year in the 
future, and their civilization did not follow because 
there were not more thinkers. Thought in every 
age and in every clime is bound to produce its 
effect. Inactivity has ever been a hindrance to 
human progress ; civilization has been high or 
low as man has been active or passive. The 
dark ages represent him as inactive, thoughtless 
and indifferent; the Renaisance was simply a 
revival of thought and not a discovery of books. 
Man may possess the knowledge of a public 
library, and if he has never thought for himself, 
he is no better or grander than a book. He will 
never find what nature has in store for him by 
continually reading other mens ideas. It were 
better there were not so many books if they are 
to destroy men’s individuality ; they are useful 
but men ought to make books and not book’s 
men. An inactive age is naturally artificial—a 
magnified image of the past, and yet by the 
efforts of a few it is generally a wonderful age,-- 




60 Signal Thoughts . 

progress written upon it and development its ex¬ 
ponent. 

If all commands were resolved into one, it 
would be an imparative command to think. 
Thought will finally conduct all men upon a plain 
where they will lay aside all formulas and grasp 
each others hand with but little difference of 
hopes and ideas. It will raise man from his 
meagerness, take him as it were through nature, 
until his ideas will follow closely upon the Great 
Ideas that have preceded him ; he will transcend 
the region of his five senses, make heaven and 
earth the temple of his spirit,—transform himself 
from a mere machine into an image of God. Be¬ 
fore its mighty power idolatry melts away; a 
material religion change itself into a spiritual—a 
perfect religion. It is the greatest stimulant 
known to fallen man ; it will do all for him that is 
becoming such a being. When defeat overtakes 
him, it proves a balm ; it defeats defeat. And it 
will control a more evil force, one that but few 
men can nobly resist—it will make of victory a 
perfect victory. There is a soberness produced 
by intense thought that converts disposition and 
changes nature ; it may turn the hair gray, but it 
makes the soul juvenile. Get a man to reflect 
and then you have a man ; get a man to think 
and then you have a product. Man must think 
or he must die. There is much danger within 


Power of Thought. 


61 

the sphere of freedom. More latitude than we 
cover and more responsibility than we are willing 
to admit. 

We must know certain things in order to pre¬ 
serve our physical existence, and in order to 
know we must think. Poison has a tendency to 
kill and must not be used as a food. We must not 
only know this, but know that there are other 
materials proper for food. The body cannot live 
by abstaining from certain obnoxious things, but 
it must have food for its natural growth. Even 
the physical sphere is freighted with responsi¬ 
bility, how much more so is the mental, where 
true freedom reigns. The field of freedom has 
not all been tilled—much has not even been sur¬ 
veyed. There are yet wonderful conquests for 
thought. You cannot tell what it may do, you 
only know it as yours—no man can take your 
thought—you cannot be robbed of it, it is yours 
—it is a part of you. 

Christianity if pure is based upon pure thought; 
life comes in the garb of thought, and death flees 
at its arrival. Sin is not a usurper, it reigns be¬ 
cause pure thought allows it, and not by might. 
Progress testifies to the greatness of thought; 
civilization to its grandeur and Christianity to its 
sublimity. In flight it is as eagles wings, in 
height like purity, in breadth like infinity, in purity 
like heaven and in effect like salvation. But it 




62 


Signal Thoughts . 


goes by the thoughtless like Christ by Satan, it 
administers its balm, but it stops not for the dead 
or dying. It is not sad that one soul is in heaven 
and another in hell; it is sad only that two are not 
in paradise. 

Life lives as it were in thought, and beauty of 
life depends upon beauty of thought. Life de¬ 
pends as much for its ease upon thought as 
thought does upon life for its existence. Feed 
the mind upon healthy thought and it cannot die ; 
life is miserable because its ideas are little; it dies 
because thought first perishes. 


Ideal Man , 


63; 


IDEAL MAN. 


Ideality stands in history as the pyramids m 
Egyptian barrenness: heading every military 
chapter, every campaign its offspring and every 
march its child. It revolutionizes countries, con¬ 
quers empires, opens up continents, and gives 
birth to nations. 

In deep and bloody carnage it contends for its> 
own in its own way, fashioning the policy of State,, 
dethroning one head solely to enthrone another; 
emptying the moneyed vaults and spilling the 
blood of innocence to gratify the ambition ot a 
leader. Or Luther—like it wends its way to 
“Worms” to pin theses of virtue on the doors of 
iniquity and vice. Ideas have fathered and fos¬ 
tered history; taking them away you thereby 
prevent history. War is simply a conflict of ideas; 
peace at its best is but ideas harmonized. 

Literature, the richest and grandest of mind 
products, is born of the ideal—greater than history, 
as it represents mind in its calm deliberations* 
whereas war is mind in a rebellious attitude- 
agitated. The former, the philosophy of intellect; 
the latter, worked o'ut through the passions and 
prejudices of men and of mobs Literature is no 
less real because it comes from the ideal. If any- 





6 4 


Signal Thoughts. 


thing, it is more real in expressing life than 
history. Fiction often makes history possible. 
Often literature must be given a people before 
they are capable of giving the world history. The 
Iliad made Greece more than Greece made the 
Iliad. Plato and Aristotle did more for their 
country than the Miltiades and Themistocles. 
Alfred as poet did more for England than Alfred 
the king. Bacon, Sidney, Spenser and Shakspeare 
absorbed history and made out of it an Augustian 
age of literature. The student can leave history 
and drink humanity afresh at the Shakspearian 
fount; history is not as strong as literature. The 
pen is mightier than the sword. The sword was 
once a mighty power, but thought has put it in 
the scabbard and hung it on the walls of oblivion, 
and the pen dipped in the ideal is waging a 
mightier, a grander, a nobler, and an eternal con¬ 
flict. 

As history comes to us through the ideal, and 
literature the ideal itself, so every individual is to 
a marked degree what he is through his ideal. 
Columbus’s idea, though unconsciously,discovered 
a new Continent, and made him historical. 
Napolean followed his idea of renown until his¬ 
tory crowned it with wreaths of national glory, 
and then defeat took the crown and sent him as 
a criminal to the island of St. Helena. Every 
man has his ideas and there is an ideal man—that 



Ideal Alan. 


H 


is, there exist the possibilities and the man, but 
if the man is clothed in the possibilities is another 
question. Yet every person has a conception of 
what he terms an ideal man, but solicit their ideals 
and instead of finding unity you find diversity. 
Ask the fashionable lady, who is ever parading 
the streets to exhibit her attire, and she will say 
her ideal man is a man of wealth. Ask the 
pretty, giddy girl of sixteen summers, and what 
is her reply? Is it a young philosopher whose 
very brain is fevered with thought and mind as 
clear as the morning sun? No, she never thinks 
of such a man, and if she had him she would not 
know what to do with him, and he would be at a 
worse loss than she. Her ideal man is “Paris’' 
fashioned—beautiful trousers, flashy tie, whirling 
cane, twisted mustache, pleated bosom — indif¬ 
ferent to the heart within—top crowned hat 
regardless of the brains beneath. She is after 
her ideal and more than likely she will find him. 
Man’s idea of the ideal man is no less varied and 
imperfect. Every profession and business occu¬ 
pation.has within it an exhibition of the littleness 
of the ideal. Man as an actor can be no greater 
than his ideas; action follows, never precedes the 
ideal, and with such difficulty does it follow that 
it is generally found far in the rear. Intellectu¬ 
ality not only paves the way but beckons on lag¬ 
ging morality. Intellect is the hope of the 





66 


Signal Thoughts . 

individual and of die nation. The world is ire 
need of broader, deeper and more comprehensive 
ideas — clearness of conception gives moral 
strength; perfect ideas of life and obligation are 
moral tutors. The ideal cannot be confined or 
concealed; imprisoned, it shines forth as “The 
Pilgrim’s Progress” to illuminate the pathway of 
soul wearied travelers, or like Luthers conceal¬ 
ment at Wartburg it will become a Patmos of 
light to futurity. The nation and the individual’s life 
is but an expansion of thought. Idea is the hand 
that holds the lever that moves the world. 

The ideal man stands amid the complexity of 
human nature; it takes but the hand of culture 
and redemption to bring him forth a stalwart in 
strength and a beauty in purity. Brush back the 
debris of willful ignorance and sin and behold him 
in original strength, his countenance radiant with 
innocence, eyes sparkling with eagerness and 
brow wreathed in godlike zealousness, whence 
came this ideal man and whither is he trending? 
What is his parentage and who is his nurse? It 
matters not whether his ancestry be Hamitic, 
Semitic or Aryan; whether Teuton, Celt, Greek 
or Hindoo. The ideal man is not born of the flesh 
but of the soul; whenever will chooses, conditions 
allow and circumstances permit, he is parented, 
and a nobler birth was never conceived, but it is 
a late hour—an evil hour, for such a tender child. 


Ideal Man. 


67 


He ought to have been longer ancestored. The 
ideal man should be conceived at least one hun- 
hred years before his birth; ideal births will give 
more ideal men. Shame on the ancestry that 
brings man into existence by the side of Satanic 
bound nature—the body wrapped in functional 
disease and the head pillowed on moral depravity. 
What a birth that sends man rebelling against 
original nature and blaspheming God before con¬ 
sciousness is born, and yet the world expects ideal 
men and heaven demands them. 

The physical man, in this world, is more 
deplorable than the spiritual; ignorance and sin 
are doing their blighting work in the one as 
well as in the other, but whereas the latter has its 
perfect Redeemer, the former is left in the hands 
of helpless and often hopeless science. The 
physician has a great, a noble profession, yet his 
skill cures but few, he can do but little more than 
alleviate pain. Physical ignorance and sin have 
been running unbridled since man first let them 
loose. This age is emphatically an age of phys¬ 
ical depravity; antiquity had not the number of 
aches, pains and fevers as man now has. The 
biblical record of death was, “He died full of 
years,” but now science is filled with the names 
of diseases and catalogued with causes of death. 
Physical health is lost because it has had no 
tutor. Its only hope is that of intellect, and 




68 


Signal Thoughts. 


mental progression in its flight has forgotten it, 
and sometimes in its eagerness, trodden upon it, 
so that it has recoiled and come back in groans 
to blight and curse mind. Mental progression 
ought not produce physical degenaration—it can¬ 
not afford it, but it does. How many minds are 
now creeping and crawling that would be soaring 
were it not for physical evil. 

The soul in order to express itself in truth and 
life, is continually pushing back dark clouds of 
physical disease. Natured death is gnawing at man’s 
vitals—it is bad—it ought not to be so, much of 
it could have been prevented. Disease is born 
of transgression; every pain speaks of violation 
and every groan a thunder clap of affirmation. 

There is a physical ideal as well as a spiritual; 
mind makes the ideal, and the ideal comes back 
to fashion the man—raising the ideal raises man 
—strengthening ideality strengthens reality. 

The ideal man in order to give ideal quality in 
ideal quantity should have—must have a physical 
ideal. It is pleasing to look upon a perfect phy¬ 
sical man—body upright, shoulders thrown back, 
features round and head erect—no scar or mark 
of disease upon him—nothing but original strength 
and beauty. Yet he is not young, not strong, 
not beautifnl, not noble. Mind alone is young, 
strong, beautiful and noble. The truly ideal man 
must be ideal in mind, in thought and in purpose. 




Ideal Alan. 


69 


He needs not necessarily be a man of genius, but 
he must have some brain and talent—capable of 
character. He can’t hovel in ignorance and su¬ 
perstition; he must be a man of some education 
and some culture, knowing enough to study his 
own experience as well as that ot humanity—not 
to be found always on the streets of wealth but 
ever on the highway of thought. Innocence and 
purity of purpose make not ideal man, but strength 
of intellect and purity of character do. It matters 
not what be man’s station in life, be he hodman, 
coal-carrier, prince or lord—thought, not position, 
makes him ideal. He must be a man not only of 
reason and judgment, but, what is infinitely great¬ 
er, true to them. Reason and judgment, like 
everything else in nature, demand fidelity; pre¬ 
varication impairs them. The liar not only lies 
but, worse than that, unfits himself for truth. The 
judgment of world is far in advance of the 
judgment as practiced; man is a poor practitioner 
of his own thoughts. Shakspeare properly terms 
it—“ If to do were as easy as to know what were 
good to do, chapels had been churches and poor 
men’s cottages, prince’s palaces. It is a good 
divine that follows his own instructions: I can 
easier teach twenty what were good to do, than 
be one of the twenty to follow mine own teach¬ 
ing.” But nevertheless the height of the ideal 
raises the grade of the seeker. 




7o 


Signal Thoughts . 


Let our ideal man, if you choose, be John the 
farmer; he comes up to the requisites as far as 
related; having the discipline of education and 
the stability of culture, he is prepared to act the 
part of the ideal man. He is known in the com¬ 
munity as a man of some learning, judgment, 
integrity and above all “common-sense”. The 
ideal man must have a home; so John gets him 
a wife. The bachelor cannot be ideal as it is 
impossible for him to practice all of ideality. Men 
are not bachelors by nature, they may even will it 
to be so and have reason for so doing, but it is 
not their desire. John is true to his ideal, and he 
sees Mary and in her he sees beauty, he is at¬ 
tracted, he is inclined, he watches her actions, 
studies her thoughts and weighs her expressions, 
he begins to admire her and finally loves her 
and, what is better than all, marries her. John is 
not one of those fellows we term “got married” 
—John married, and he was not like a man that 
had been trading horses and after the exchange 
wondered what he had. John knew he had an 
angel and he, like a god, was determined to make 
for her an angelic home. Now, we have him in 
that sacred place—a home—where the brightest 
ray of the ideal should shine forth, his muscles 
are active in its support, his mind thoughtful for 
its welfare; his love for Mary is increasing, bud¬ 
ding, flowering and fructifying to increase, to bud, 





Ideal Alan. 


7i 


to flower and to fructify again. In the household 
he is ever reasonable, if his thoughts differ from 
Marys, he expresses them, and he wants Mary 
to express her honest opinion, and then he says, 
let us reason together. He believes in truth and 
what is better believes in following it. If Mary 
has made a failure of her baking and feels badly 
because of it, and when John comes in and is 
mating his meal, she says the bread is horrid, John 
says it is not as good as usual, but let it go, you 
will bake the next all right. He loves her too 
much to lie by saying the bread is all right when 
he knows it is not. When he goes to the barn 
and finds his best horse sick, he don’t get the 
hysterics and go to the house—get his wife nerv¬ 
ous—and tear and swear that the horse will die 
and he knows it will, and all the time his better 
judgment says the horse won’t die. How many 
men do just such things, making the poor little 
wife feel a hundred thousand times worse than 
the old horse if it were in the last stage of colic, 
and the fact is ninety-nine times'out of one hun¬ 
dred the old horse never dies, and nine times out 
of ten the old plug is not even sick. A little 
shoat dies, and the old man comes in and raises 
everything off the floor—dead shoat for breakfast, 
dinner and supper, and the innocent wife has to 
partake of it all night and the children keep 
their distance from the old grumbler for six weeks. 




72 


Signal Thoughts . 


John, the ideal man, don’t bring the barn into 
the house, nor take the pig pen to bed; if he 
thinks of his stock he has enough sense to keep 
it to himself. John at breakfast talks of mind, at 
dinner of reason, and at supper of thought. His 
wife accosts him and says, dear John, are you not 
going soon to sell those six hogs? I should think 
they were certainly large enough by this time for 
market. Why! John says, my dear wife those 
six shoats died six months ago. Mary says, I 
did not know it. John answers, of course you 
did not, and it would not have brought them to 
life if you had. John says, I came out one 
morning and found them all dead, and I thought. 
“Let the dead bury the dead.” Mary was not 
unnerved and kept awake, nor deprived of food 
or raiment because the pigs died; she was happy 
and John felt it his mission to keep her so. 

John supports the family, or at least is the 
chief supporter, the children are not making all 
the money and then “old dad” put it in his pocket 
and let the family suffer like paupers. How 
many fathers are simply using their children as 
slaves to make the old man more money. The 
boys and girls work hard day and night, and then 
when they must have a pair of boots or shoes 
once in two years, the old man says they wear out 
enough boots and shoes to send him to the poor- 
house—and it is a pity the old man is not in jail 


Ideal Man . 


73 


where he ought to be, then the children and wife 
could make a nice living and, what is infinitely 
greater, live in peace. The ideal man does not 
hold the pocketbook, he controls it, it is no more 
his then it is his wife's or the childrens, it belongs 
to all because all have supported it. John does 
not wait until the poor wife becomes nervous, 
and frets her poor heart out and then finally get 
up enough courage to say John the tea is all, or 
we ought to have some beefsteak, and then after 
she has asked she is answered in such a manner 
that she wishes to God she never had asked for 
anything. John supplies the table and sees to it 
that it is properly furnished with wholesome food; 
he looks to the physical welfare of his family. 
Some men for fifty years run a household and 
never in all that time ask once if anything is 
wanted for the table. 

Some m£n expect their wives to cook a big meal 
out of nothing, and they are so unreasonable that 
they get mad if they don’t find on the table what 
they want. Again, the wife must occasionally 
have a little money, and it is no one’s business 
save her own, what she does with it; of course 
the wife never thinks of asking her husband what 
he is going to do with his money, if she did she 
would never think of asking the second time. So 
the wife asks for one cent, and what? Why! She 

receives a look that causes Satan to tremble and 
6 




74 


Signal Thoughts. 


shut the doors of his region so that the arch-fiends 
cannot see it lest they be frightened to death. 
Does she get it? May be, but the old man hands 
it over as though it were a compulsory gift of a 
hundred thousand dollars and the poor wife sulks 
off as though she had committed murder in the 
first degree. In the tamest words in the English 
language—hell on such a man. This is not im¬ 
agination or poetry—wish it were so—but it is 
reality, dotted over every nation and over every 
clime. 

John’s wife has no more fear in asking him 
for a dollar than she has in going to her own 
pocket-book to see if there is a dollar in it. The 
-children don’t go bare-footed in winter, rather 
ithan ask father for a new pair of shoes. John 
can see if anything is needed without being told 
a hundred times and he also sees his duty and 
like a man he intends to discharge it, *and not like 
.a crank attempt to kick it off. It don’t take the 
whole neighborhood, and the whole school and 
the teacher to persuade John to get a twenty-five 
cent primer for his own little boy, and that after 
the term is two-thirds gone. The ideal father can¬ 
not be lazy. 

John has gained some wealth and is now inde¬ 
pendent financially. He has built hog-houses but 
he don’t live in them; he has built barns but he 
don’t sleep in them, he has raised stock but he 


Ideal Man . 


75 


don’t worship them, he does not think more 
of his elegent driving team than he does of his 
wife. 

John has done even more, he has grown in 
thought and experience; he has been reading, 
and thinking, and he has been loving—all to the 
interest of his family. John has been living in 
the house, and with his family. How often father 
sleeps in the same house, eats at the same table, 
and yet virtually does not live with his family— 
the only time he speaks to them is when he is 
mad and blue. The wife is continually shivering, 
fearing he will speak, for she knows that when he 
does it will be some lamentation. He never has 
a smile for her, no encouragement, no gratifying 
thought to console her nervous disposition—made 
so by his own tyranny—no grand idea to show 
the sublimity of life. But the old miser,—the old 
tyrant is on a tirade lashing and grinding the poor 
soul of the one whom he took on oath, as high as 
high heaven, to support, comfort and cherish. If 
spring comes late the poor wife must suffer; if God 
sees fit not to give rain, she must suffer for it, or if 
He withholds it she is to blame; if a cyclone takes 
the crop or a wind stormblows the barn down, 
she is treated as though she did it. If the chick¬ 
ens take the cholera and the old miser has to buy 
beef for the threshers, it is hell for the household. 
And yet sometimes the old man goes to church, 




7 6 


Signal Thoughts . 


and at home he never forgets to pray. The chil¬ 
dren hear his prayers and they will never forget 
them, because not one of his prayers ever rise 
above the old tyrant’s miserable life. Instead of 
him giving his family an idea of a Holy God, his 
life gives them a clear conception of a perfect 
devil incarnate. Such a man is a greater traitor 
than Jeff. Davis ever was. The rankest infidelity 
of Tom Payne or Bob Ingersoll is angelic in com¬ 
parison to such a man’s religion and action. 

But how different it is with our ideal man— 
John—his appearance at the door is not a thun¬ 
der cloud to the family, but a halo of light. In¬ 
stead of the children sulking back they greet him ; 
instead of the wife being chilled to death by his 
presence, she receives a warmth by his embrace 
that none but he and she and the redeemed in 
heaven can understand. John talks to his family, 
not of cattle, horses and hogs but of life, truth 
and virtue ; he tells the boys of Washington, the 
father of their country, of “honest old Abe,” and 
a host of other grand and noble men who fought, 
bled and died for their country. He tells the 
girls of the beauties of domestic life, how great 
men point to their mothers as the one to whom 
they owe their greatness. Thought and life though 
old must be revealed ; he talks to them of the 
philosophy of Kant, the logic of Paul, the faith of 
Job, the depth of John, and how Christ suffered 


Ideal Man. 


77 


and died upon the tree. The children drop their 
play-things to hear papa tell his stories of love. 
John’s prayers first do their work on earth and 
then ascend on eagle’s wings to heaven to return 
at once with their fruitage ; his religion is a reli- 
gion of action and not of skeleton-theory. The 
prayer of such a man means something in a 
household. It gives the children faith in the God 
of their father and they are made to feel that 
Christ did die for the sins of the world—that He 
gave light and life to the world, and not misera¬ 
ble tyrants to blight like a mildew the affections 
of the world. 

John takes the whole family to church—even 
the baby—he cradles all in the nursery of virtue; 
he instructs them, guides them and leads them in 
the way they should go. They feel ever invited to 
ask father’s advice on any question, no timidity 
exists between him and his family ; the children 
in his presence and in conversation with him feel 
the same ease and composure they do among 
themselves. And yet they feel that effective dis¬ 
cipline of father’s years, thought and morality. 
There is more lasting power in the tender fibers 
of love than in rivited chains of Prometheus, 
words draw harder on susceptible nature than 
the hand of force—recoil of thought is more 
chastening than the strips of punishment—the 
only true discipline is that of self-discipline. 



78 


Signal Thoughts . 


The ideal man does not spend his evenings, 
with card or cue in hand, he is not out all night 
to a ball and come home in the morning, covered 
with the crime and vice of last night’s debauchery 
—depriving his family of the necessaries of life 
and disqualifying himself for the next day’s labor. 
But he spends his evenings at home with his 
family; he would rather be in his own home than 
any other place, and his family think there is no 
place like it and they want John there. The 
family is such a unit that the absence of one is felt 
by all. The family could not do without John, 
and John could not get along without the family. 
The balls and brawls have no charm for him; he 
can’t loiter on the street corners because he can’t 
leave his family without depriving himself of a 
luxury ; he has there created such a fine senti¬ 
ment of life that it is attracting his very self. 
The children desire not the street and hovel. 
Home is their cherished abode; its associations are 
nearer and dearer to them than any earthly 
thing. 

If presence and association are to be within the 
home, it should be attractive. Nothing is so bar¬ 
ren and cold as a brainless and heartless home— 
children find no pleasure and wife no ease—all is 
as frigid as an arctic winter—everything is com¬ 
bined and ready to banish the first warm thought 
that might possibly spring up in a mental desert. 



Ideal Man . 


79 


The children are where ? out on the street. Why ? 
because they have been driven there. Of the 
thousands of little urchins on our streets, few are 
there but what some cruel father or mother sent 
them there. Turn a dog out of his kennel and lie 
will find a sleeping place of his own; close the door 
of the home to the boy and he will go to some 
den, some hovel, some brawl or some hell, but 
that he will have association. You have seen on 
the street those ragged, dusty and swearing little 
urchins, and said to yourself they ought not be 
here. Follow one of them, chase him home andl 
look into his home and you will not be surprised 
that he is on the street. The street is a bad 
place for any boy, but it is better than many a 
home. The great trouble is, the boy has been 
born in immorality, cradled in vice, tutored in 
crime until he is entrenched in iniquity beyond 
the hope of moral reformation. The boy not only 
suffers, but the nation’s independence and life blood 
is sapped by just such subjects. The nation can 
rise no higher than the home, and when it goes 
the nation must go with it; the home draws the 
circumference of the nation. Defective homes 
originate almshouses, jails and penitentiaries, and' 
furnish the inmates. The nation depends so much 
upon the homes that it makes them for the home¬ 
less and the outcasts. Make the home the cen¬ 
ter of the ideal, and it will draw a circle without 





8o 


Signal Thoughts . 


the variance of an arc or an inclination of a sine; 
it is the hope of the nation, the dissembler of 
socialism, the distroyer of communism and the 
oppressor of anarchy. America to-day, in her 
pride and strength, is humiliated and weakened 
because of the deplorable fact that so many of her 
citizens never having had American homes or 
homes Americanized. She is reaping much of the 
fruitage of European defections and impurities of 
home life; she ought not for she sowed not the 
seed, and no nation ought to gather the tares 
sown by another. The homes of Europe speak 
volumes of history—the homes of the land are the 
historians of the age. If you want to read true 
history, read it in the home. Everything begins 
there, to return in due time with its reward. Man 
leaves the home of his birth but for one of his 
own. The soul without a home is like a bird 
without a cage; it flutters, it hovers, it droops, it 
dies. 

The ideal home cannot forget its country. 
John not only brings up the past history of his 
country, but the living with its importance, so 
that the children are made to feel that they are a 
part of recorded events. They are taught so that 
they know what a representative government is, 
and upon what it depends; they realize the im¬ 
portance of a vote and will cast it with intelligence. 
Father has taught them so much patriotism, so 










Ideal Man. 


81 


much statesmanship and so much of country, that 
he needs not ever fear that his sons and daugh¬ 
ters will be found in the rear of national progress. 

John, the ideal man, has, by his own light, 
brought his children to the very fountains of 
knowledge, and they have drunk deep of the 
“Pierian Spring;” but he has not forgotten the 
benefits of a college curriculum and instead of 
buying more land for the boys and more toilet 
ware for the girls, he sends them through college, 
and they come out riper in knowledge, in virtue 
and in wisdom. And they think more of father 
than ever, because he has given them something 
that gold or rubies could not purchase, nor thieves 
steal nor time erase-odvinor a man education comes 

o 

within one of giving him character—giving de¬ 
velopment is giving thought, and the thought of 
moral development is character. If it were pos¬ 
sible for one soul to push another into heaven, it 
would be by the lever of education. Education 
expands reason and allows true faith. Often men 
have no faith in themselves, in humanity, nor in 
God, because they have not enough reason to 
have faith. Education draws fibers of infinity out 
of finity, reflecting eternal light into the darkest 
chambers of mind and illuminating the whole soul 
until it becomes radiant and aglow with divine 
truth—closely seconding “ Divinity Itself.” 

The ideal man must also be ideal in his rela- 



82 


Signal Thoughts . 

tion to his fellow-men; he must have enough 
thought to view humanity in all its phases, and 
learn to love his neighbor as himself—to realize 
that he and his neighbor are possessed of the 
same nature, susceptible of the same feeling, 
capable of the same development and moved by 
the same thought and emotion; that the Great 
God that made the one made the other. The 
higher grade of thought must not trample upon 
the lower, but in humility look down, and if it be 
necessary descend to the very slums and hells 
and pour out its great missionary spirit and bap¬ 
tize the lower into grander thought and greater 
life. 

In the great conflict of capital versus labor, our 
ideal man has sown no seed of discord; he has 
by breadth of mind and expansion of thought 
raised himself above personal hostility. He sees 
that one honorable profession is just as noble as 
another, that all depends upon the man; he can 
see that every business has its bad features as 
well as its good. He measures man not by po¬ 
sition in life, nor rank in society, but by state of 
mind; he finds no satisfaction in envying men 
their lot, but rejoices with those that rejoice and 
weeps with those that* weep. John is no prey to 
society, he has sapped no life blood from its vitals. 
History has not recorded his name, nor news¬ 
papers paraded or eulogized it, but his life work 


Ideal Alan . 


has prevented more wrong than armies have 
destroyed; the nation has never heard of him but 
he has poured life blood into its very heart. He 
has stood as a stalwart in his home, in society 
and in the nation;—rich in experience and mature 
in thought, he has left his pathway illuminated 
for the weary traveler of life. Missionary fields 
have not seen him but have felt him. 

Our ideal man has grown old, the decrepitude 
of age has slowly stolen upon him. The world’s 
duties are apparently accomplished, physical 
vitality has left him, but his mind is comparatively 
unaffected; it is young, buoyant, fresh and literal¬ 
ly budding with hope. Life is as near and dear 
and as sublime as ever; he prays not for death, 
but labors to meet death’s requisites. He is not 
a blight to the home he once ornamented and 
graced with his presence and thought, but a liv¬ 
ing flower of continual fragrance, from the 
smallest unto the greatest; he is a drag to no one 
because his thoughts are soaring high in the realm 
of the ideal. Every word, every syllable is re¬ 
membered and cherished by the dear children 
and loving wife. .As fruit in its maturity is 
preserved in order to keep it out of its season, 
so the octogenarian’s very presence is retained 
to fill the space to be soon made vacant by his 
demise. The children, whatever be their lot or 
fortune, can never forget father. His life has been 




8 4 


Signal Thoughts . 

stronger and more effective to them than the 
example of Christ Himself. His truths and 
thoughts are brighter to them than the light of 
revelation, because he has been so Christ-like that 
he has absorbed and reflected revelation in its 
brightest concrete. 

The venerable man is on his death-bed; his 
head is white with age, his pillow white with care. 
The family has surrounded his couch to see the 
dissolution of a great soul and a worn out body. 
He needs not speak, he has spoken. Unlike a 
mental sloth; he thinks not of God for the first 
time; unlike a moral coward, he confesses not his 
sins for the first time. He has long ago thrown 
off all fears and is now ready to test the realities 
of death. He opens his eyes for the last time, 
and seeing his weeping family encircling his bed¬ 
side, he says, sons—daughters “life is real, life is 
earnest,” but death is as real and no less earnest. 
I am on the border line of this world and have 
time for but two prayers, one for your souls and 
the other that I may be permitted, if it please God, 
to be conscious and see the drapery “of the valley 
of the shadow of death”—a loving father, a tender 
husband, a great citizen and a sincere Christian— 
is dead. The earth mourns—heaven rejoices. 
Father is dead in body but alive and growing in 
thought, and the act that would efface remem¬ 
brance of him from the family’s mind would be 


Ideal Man. 


85 


treason. They love his thoughts and sayings as 
they loved him; they cannot forget him for his 
life is crowding itself upon them atevery turn. Even 
grandchildren unborn will learn of him through his 
great thoughts and loving acts. The wings of a 
great idea cannot be cropped, or a great thought 
deplumed ; they soar with eagle’s wings over the 
grave, and pinion their flight onward and upward, 
higher and higher until a peaceful reception is 
given them in the very bosom of eternal truth. 
A great thought is born to be eternal, and nothing 
can cut it short of eternity, but a great man is 
greater than a great thought and no one can rob 
him of his heaven. 

The great soul of the ideal man has been as a 
god in its association and an inspiration to human¬ 
ity. It added health to belief, certainty to knowl¬ 
edge and beauty to virtue. It has cast a halo of 
light that lacked but one ray of infirfity. The 
family has erected an altar to his soul, and the 
neighbors are worshiping at it, and the community 
bowed before it. Literature hymning his praise 
and making him immortal—No! literature cannot 
make such men immortal, but such men make 
literature immortal by breathing into it the breath 
of immortality. Life lived in itself, and not 
through the thoughts of another, is life immortal. 
To be real in life is reality in death; to be ideal 
in life is ideality in death. 


86 


Signal Thoughts . 


IDEAL WOMAN, 


“A woman has the same human nature that a man 
has, the same human rights—to life, liberty, and 
pursuit of happiness—the same human duties; 
and they are as inalienable in woman as in man." 
—Parker. 

“If there be anyone whose power is in beauty, 
in purity, in goodness, it is woman.”—Beecher. 

No, God did not descend and create woman, it 
was not a thoughtless act; she was no more 
created to supply man’s wants, than man was to 
supply woman’s. If the portals of intellect for 
man were opened wider, the curtains of virtue for 
woman were drawn higher. Let us forget this 
idea of superiority and inferiority. One thing 
is sure, man is not so strong but that he can feel 
woman’s weakness, nor woman so weak, but that 
she can apprehend man’s strength. No! heaven 
was not black at woman’s birth, but brighter than 
day, and more luminous than the sun—not a 
picture removed from its walls, but the brightest, 
the prettiest, and the loveliest of all was added 
thereto—a woman—a mother. God created a 
soul and that is enough. 

Man talks much of woman’s frailty, of her 
weakness, and of her imbecility; he catalogues 



Ideal Woman. 


37 


her imperfections, until he has a volume labeled, 
“Woman’s Weakness”. And one is urged to 
believe that had it not been for woman, Christ 
would never have suffered the torture of the 
cross. One of three things is sure, either Adam 
sinned first, or Eve, or else it was mutual. If it 
were mutual, one was as weak as the other, or if 
Eve sinned first and thereby persuaded Adam to 
sin, Adam ought by this time have enough man¬ 
hood to admit his weakness in being persuaded 
by the weakness of the weak. Woman is a light 
of the world, and if Heaven would remove them 
all, where is the man with such a little and con¬ 
tracted soul that would desire to see the dawn of 
another day? If there be one, let him go to the 
slums of forgetfulness and die. 

Haply, the war of the sex is over, but it was 
the most infamous, fiendish and infernal conflict 
ever waged, and who waged it? Certainly not the 
woman, but man to his shame, and history cannot 
erase it, and Heaven to be just must record it. 
Thank God, the woman of to-day is not cursed 
by the Egyptian darkness of barbarism, but is 
receiving the blessed light of civilization. The 
American woman is standing on this side “anno 
domini” in the brightest light of civilization. 
Behold her! See her! Watch her! She is now 
a free moral agent clothed in the rights and priv¬ 
ileges of intellectual progress. Right, justice, 


88 


Signal Thoughts . 

and reason must expect as much of her as of man. 
She is unfettered, but with freedom and liberty 
come duties and responsibilities. She has to her 
credit gained her independence, but with it 
secured the attention of the critic. She is a 
woman—a soul knows not woman; it is too grand, 
too sublime a thing to stoop to earth for its 
grandeur and sublimity. It would rather unsex 
itself, and wing its flight in thought to eternal 
truth, where man and woman are one. 

The ideal man has been seen in his everyday 
attire, and now let the ideal woman be seen, and 
then let heaven join the two and God give the 
benediction. Much that has been said of the 
ideal man in general, may be said of the ideal 
woman. She needs not necessarily be of the 
strongest of intellects, but she must have enough 
mind to have common-sense. 

How does the world estimate woman’s ideality? 
Ask the gallant of society for his conception, and 
what is it? Beauty, dress, or both, if he can get 
it. If he can’t get both, why he will take the one 
he can. A man in Paris can, by fashion, create 
just such an ideal as some men want. A dude 
hasn’t enough brains to know that a woman 
ought to have sense. He would never think of 
looking for his ideal in anything greater than 
dress, paint or powder, and he is such a big fool, 
that if he saw her in her morning attire before 


Ideal Woman . 


89 


the goddess of artificiality, woman’s redeemer, 
had done its work, he could never believe but that 
she was a beauty, and yet there are women who 
dare not be deprived of their artificiality, for if 
they were, it would necessarily incur funeral 
expenses, and who would desire to be a mur¬ 
derer. 

Ask the farmer for his idea of an ideal woman, 
and he will say, Well!—a good one; one that is 
not afraid of work, nor of horses, of mules nor 
cows—a strong one, one that can take the heavy 
end of the log if necessary—and it is generally 
necessary. 

Interrogate the man of society, and he will telf 
you a beauty. There was never yet a man so big 
fool, but that he knew enough to put in beauty- 
as an attribute of his ideal. But the man of so 
ciety wants something besides beauty. His ideal 
must be a talker and up with the times and latest 
fashions. He don’t care what, she says just so it is 
talk. He don’t care how she is dressed just so it 
is the latest style. 

Ask the indifferent man, and he will say, I 
don’t care, and when he makes his choice he gen¬ 
erally gets his ideal to perfection. They live to¬ 
gether in don’t care way, and they don’t care if 
they don’t live together, and if they do live until 
one dies, the town pays the funeral expenses and 

the other don’t care. 

7 


90 


Signal Thoughts . 


The ideal man naturally seeks the ideal woman; 
he wants brains not hat, intellect not dress, soul 
not art—woman not an artificial monument of 
nothingness. The greatest combination in the 
universe is two great souls—man and woman. 
The ideal woman should have all that the ideal 
man had in regard to education and ancestral 
birth. Let us look at woman in society and in 
the home. Society has its influence, and it has 
wound its venemous tendril around woman and 
made her its creature; it has deprived her of her 
individuality, made her susceptible to the slight¬ 
est change of society, and left her falser than fic¬ 
tion and stranger than romance. There are wo- 
men whose god is society. Society tells them 
when to rise and they rise; society tells them how 
to dress and they dress; society tells them how 
to walk and they walk; society tells them how to 
talk and they talk; society tells them howto pray 
and they pray; society tells them to lie and they 
lie, and their whole life is a blank lie to their bet¬ 
ter nature. Society has such a hold upon her 
that a reasonable man has no use for her; no 
pleasure given by her presence, no instruction in 
her talk. A man would be a fool to marry such 
a woman, for if he took upon himself the con¬ 
jugal yoke to-day, he could not tell with whom he 
would be joined on the morrow, for society might 
change during the night, and the next day he 


Ideal Woman. 


9i 


would not know his own wife. If woman has a 
weakness that man has not, it is her artificiality. 
No person can make a success of shams. Get away 
with your “pretention on wheels” and give us 
real men and real women, and then society will 
become real. It is a fact, a few women at some 
little gathering will produce more artificiality in 
one day than a college can reality in a year. 
Artificiality is woman’s personal devil. Be real, 
live real, for in death you must be real. An arti¬ 
ficial soul is the most artificial thing in the uni¬ 
verse, because it might have been the most real. 
An artificial flower gives out no odor, and an arti¬ 
ficial soul no life. 

The ideal woman loses not her individuality, 
but creates and takes on individuality. She is true 
and real to herself, to reason and to God. She is 
a woman of mind and not of affectation; once 
known she can never be forgotten. She leaves the 
impression of woman’s worth, of woman’s charac¬ 
ter, of woman’s purity and of woman’s soul, 
wherever she goes. Her presence purifies society 
and renovates the very streets on which she passes. 
Our ideal woman attracts great souls and takes 
on their greatness. 

There are women who read much and label 
themselves well read, but all their reading is of 
such a nature that it gives no growth, nor matur¬ 
ity of mind. They read nothing but fiction, or 


92 


Signal Thoughts . 


romance, or some fairy tale—something light* 
something pleasing, is all they want. Prose is too* 
heavy, too dry, and philosophy they don’t under¬ 
stand, not because it is impossible, but because- 
they are not able. Not so with our ideal woman, 
she is a reader of books of life and thought—that 
which gives life and thought; she is urging on the 
leaders of mental activity. Now she has over¬ 
taken them, now she is beckoning them on. She 
is now more than a great reader of great books r 
she is a great thinker—a philosopher. Women 
are not as original as they ought to be, nor as. 
profound, but it is not because they are not cap¬ 
able, but because of capabilities unexercised. The 
world ought to have a greater exhibition of 
woman’s talent—a power of mind as well as flow 
of heart; she owes it to herself and to the nation.. 
It is a historical fact that man has led in inven¬ 
tion, in discovery, in progress, in reformation and' 
in thought. Woman, in the past ages, was. 
pushed to the background and fettered, and 
woman of to-day is holding herself there. She 
has scarcely begun to think and never philosoph¬ 
izes. She is free, but as a class not mentally active. 
She is a great realizer, but not progressive; slower 
in conception than man, but quicker in perception; 
probably not as deep in thought, but more vital ; 
not as much of a philosopher, but more of a 
Christian; not as much of reason, but more of love.. 


Ideal Woman. 


93 


’But this does not mean that man and woman 
have different natures, but that in certain phases 
of life, the one is ahead and in certain other 
phases the other. The ideal woman, by gathering 
up the fibers of diversity and complexity into a 
unity of soul purpose, reveals her greatness. The 
great moral rivers that are percolating society 
and inundating the deserts of vice and producing 
the great alluvial plains of virtue, are produced 
by woman. Civil society could not for one day 
dispense with her presence. She stimulates 
•commercial activity, and sustains it by her moral 
tension. The little white school-house on the 
hill has seen her, and the saloon in the valley 
knows not her presence. Fortified in the one, she 
hurls her venemous darts at the other. She may 
not have led in as many reformations as man, but 
she has outdone man in preventing deformation. 
The ideal woman stands back of society, and her 
shoulders are under the great superstructure of 
state. The church looks to her for its redeemer, and 
missionary fields await her tillage. The ideal 
woman is the greatest historian of the age, for 
rshe, at the cradle, writes the history of nations 
before it is acted. 

If the ideal woman is to appear better in one 
place than any other, it is in the home. Home is 
the greatest place on earth—greater than the 
.state and greater than the church. It is either 


94 


Signal Thoughts . 


more of heaven, or more of hell than any other 
place in the universe, and the woman is greatly 
the maker. The ideal woman must have a home, 
and she ought not to make it or furnish it. It 
ought to be given her as a gift, to become her 
sphere of action. We need ideal women every¬ 
where; more are wanted in the kitchen. There is. 
too little science and too poor judgment in the 
culinary department; cooking requires science, 
art, and common sense combined. Dyspepsy is 
the greatest disease of the age, and with its grim 
visage, it treads the universe of man, dispelling 
ambition, wrecking hope, blasting faith, and set¬ 
ting up melancholy, despair and death, and nine- 
tenths of it is born in the kitchen, and the cook 
the parent. A Belshazzer s feast may be a great 
thing to look upon, but a plain meal well prepared 
and served on a tidy table, is the work of the 
ideal woman. How many children are made 
dyspeptics before they have reached their teens— 
noble lives prevented from exercising their noble¬ 
ness, all because a cook did not do her duty. Of 
course there are those whose skeletons by birth 
are too heavenly to carry flesh, and stomachs too 
spiritual to endure material substance, and the 
ideal cook is not expected to put flesh on heavenly 
bones, or feed ethereal stomachs, nor has. 
she the privilege to murder such when they do* 
exist. 


Ideal Woman . 


95 


The idea, that the kitchen is degrading, is false. 
It is more important than the sitting-room, and 
ought to be as beautiful and clean as a parlor. 
Woman, when you are in the kitchen, you are in 
a palace that metes out health or disease, just as 
it chooses. The spoon is the scepter of the world; 
and if you want to murder a man, kill him quick 
and don’t distress him to death. Wife, if you 
have a husband that you love just a little, don’t 
entertain him in the parlor and have the hired 
girl cooking a meal of dynamite that will blast 
love. You need not necessarily be in the kitchen, 
but it is your duty to see that some one is there; 
and that that some one is doing her duty. Some 
women are so careless and indifferent to culinary 
work, that before they be permitted to grace a 
kitchen, they ought to pass an examination of 
proficiency and give bonds for fidelity of duty. 
The ideal woman seeks not to throw off the 
responsibilities of the kitchen, but realizes that it 
ought to be the sanctum of any kingly palace; 
and she who is too great to be in the kitchen, 
is too small to be in a home. A great many kitch¬ 
ens do look as though everyone in the universe 
was afraid of them. The ideal woman’s kitchen 
is as neat as a parlor, and as clean as cleanliness 
can make it, and what is better, she has made 
cooking a study and knows what and how to cook, 
and never attempts to put all the grease into one 


96 


Signal Thoughts. 


pie. She prepares meals that strengthen the strong 
and aid the weak; she is a better physician for 
dyspeptics than all the doctors. Give us better 
cooks and we will have stronger men in the fields, 
healthier men in the shops, better students in the 
schools, more eloquence in the forum, abler men 
in the pulpit, and more souls on their way to 
heaven. Ideality is born in the kitchen, and often 
ideality is fettered, throttled and killed in the 
kitchen;—in it may rise the highest strains of 
poetry, or the lowest notes of lamentation. Take 
the ministers from the pulpit; take the missionaries 
from the field, but don’t take the ideal woman’s 
knowledge and judgment from the kitchen. Fash¬ 
ion, appearance or looks, is not beauty—duty is 
beauty, and the greatest duty is the greatest 
beauty; and the ideal woman exhibits more beauty 
in the household than on the streets. 

The ideal woman is grand, but her transition 
to the ideal mother is grander. Then heaven puts 
on a new drapery and becomes silent to hear the 
rejoicing on earth; paradise forgets the ninety 
and nine, and waits upon the one just born. The 
cradle is lit up by the light of its own countenance; 
—more rejoicing at one birth-bed, than at all the 
Christian death-beds of the land—sieht is brighter 
than faith—birth grander than death; and mother, 
with babe in arms, forgets this world, and they 
dwell together in heaven in equal purity. Beecher 


Ideal Woman . 


97 


said, “When God thought of mother, He must 
have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it 
quickly,—so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, 
power and beauty, was the conception! ” Nothing 
on earth is so vocal for heaven as the name— 
mother; none other so affectionate, so pure, or so 
lovely. Eliminate mother, and life is a desert; 
without her earth is frigid and heaven cold— 
mother once is mother forever. Man is not born 
into soul existence; he is nursed and nurtured into 
it. He intuitively, rather instinctively cleaves to 
his mother. The child can do without its God, 
but it cannot do without its mother—she is god 
mother. The little innocence has been given over 
to its mother for safe keeping and instruction. 
And, O mother! when you take it, God, as it were, 
stops activity and watches how you receive it. It 
is a charge as strong as that of your own soul; 
and for heavens sake and the child’s do not neg¬ 
lect it. A mother has for a time, as it were, two 
lives to live and two characters to form. Heaven 
has lent her one in order to aggrandize the world 
and ennoble herself, and supply heaven. The 
thought of God entrusting so much to a human 
being, makes one shudder; but mother, He has 
done it. He has, as it were, removed Himself 
from responsibility and allowed you to hold the 
reins of the destiny of an immortal soul. Will 
you pick them up and guide that soul into virtue, 


98 


Signal 7 'holights . 


thought and life; or will you drive it into vice, 
crime, debauchery and eternal damnation. Who 
murders virtue? Who murders thought? Who 
murders truth? and who destroys life? Not 
necessarily the man on the gallows. The delib¬ 
erate murderer swings, as an admonition of the 
fruits of crime, while the ignorance, criminal 
negligence and willful and iniquitous dealings of 
an infamous mother are unnoticed by the mass; not 
recognized in ethics, and unheard of in the pulpit. 
There are mothers who do not give their children 
the care of animal instinct. It is a severe charge, 
but some mothers send their sons out into the 
world to become criminals, and then ask society 
to punish criminals. They push their children out 
into the streets of cities, into a foaming sea of 
hellish vice, in order to get rid of the little brats, 
as they term them. Mothers in the home make 
life so miserable for the little fellows, that in 
comparison hell would be a paradise for which 
they long;—the darkest vice of the streets is 
beauty in comparison to the best virtue of the 
home; and then people, like fools, wonder why 
the children are so bad. Bad! why! made so by 
the appearance, acts and grumbling of a satanic 
mother;—hells greatest and most active agent in 
the homes of innocent children. Plastic mind is 
as susceptible to vice as to virtue. Give vice the 
start and it invariable gains the race. 


Ideal Woman . 


99 


The ideal mother is loved by her children and 
never feared; the streams of love and affection 
are ever percolating and flowing in and out of 
mother’s tender heart and the children’s innocent 
minds. Mother is cherished by all; when she is 
at home the children gravitate homeward as the 
magnet needle seeks its equilibrium. She is there 
to cherish, fondle and caress. She makes home so 
lovable, so beautiful, so instructive and so divine 
like, that the boys and girls can desire nothing 
better. Mother’s Christianity is Christ in her 
own personality. The ideal mother must be an 
educator. Children must not be left too much to 
experimental knowledge; experience is positive¬ 
ness, but the child is often positively lost by the 
effects of innocent experience. The vital and 
everlasting period of life is within a radius of 
fifteen years of the cradle; and it is not so much the 
child as the mother that is recording life. The 
youthful mind should be told how to live and not 
left to live and then told to watch the results of 
its life. 

Before discretion can cast its light, physical 
decrepitude and moral depravity steal upon the 
boys and girls. Christ died not for the sins of the 
world, but for righteousness; so, some one must 
live and if need be die for the boys and girls. 
Schools, colleges and universities are doing much, 
but they cannot do what the home has neglected. 


IOO 


Signal Thoughts. 


The college “Alma Mater” is dear, but mother is 
dearer. The ideal mother has no difference of 
concern for the welfare of her children; to her it 
is an immortal soul and nothing less; she is, and 
realizes that she ought to be, a living example of 
truth, thought, light and life unto her progeny. 
She picks up the smallest fibers of responsibility 
and weaves them into a perfect piece of obligation 
discharged. There is no grander sight on earth, 
no prettier picture in heaven than that of an 
intelligent and pious mother surrounded by a 
cluster of anxious children rapping at the portals 
of mind and heart; and mother, opening up the 
doors of knowledge, sending forth wonderful 
streams of thought, baptizing the youthful mind 
wdth the Spirit of eternal truth. Some might call 
it heaven descended to earth; but no, it is earth 
ascending—a hallowed state of mind cares not so 
much where it is, but what it is. 

The ideal mother makes an ideal home. She is 
all in one; she is doctor, standing between disease 
and the child—teacher standing between igno¬ 
rance and the child—Christ standing between 
hell and the child; and mother’s sympathy, 
admonitions, love and heart renderings must be 
trampled upon if the boys or girls become lost. 
And there was never yet a soul so corrupt that it 
loved to trample upon the dying embers of a 
loving mother. A wicked, villainous and lost boy 


Ideal Woman . 


ioi 


can swim long on the streams of vice and iniquity,, 
but he cannot on the tears of a fond mother. 

The great physician of opportunities of our land 
is the mother. Doctors may cure diseases, but 
mothers can prevent disease. Laws of health,, 
growth and development must be taught the child. 
Don’t let the child’s own discretion and judgment 
wake up and find its physical self a pallid and 
ghastly corpse; but a beautiful rose of health. It 
takes work, care and knowledge to foster a child. 
It takes sleepless nights and watchful days to 
nourish the child out of the cradle to the years of 
discretion. And at first thought, it seems as. 
though God might have created man with greater 
life, though at the cost of opportunity. But par¬ 
ents should care for their children, remembering 
that they themselves may be as helpless in old 
age, as a child in its mother’s arms. The child,, 
virtually at its birth begins a self-sustaining life, 
by afterwards caring for its parents in their 
decline and decrepitude; and parents thereby get 
paid in gold coin for their trouble. What an ex¬ 
change of noble opportunities; you cannot say 
which is the greater, for they are equal! 

The great professorship of the land is held by 
the ideal mother. In the house is the place to 
create that burning zeal for knowledge. Mothers 
can awaken desires when all else fail; and the 
ideal mother must be able to feed the highest and 


102 Signal Thoughts . 

noblest aspirations to which a human soul is 
susceptible. Never awaken a desire to see it 
wither on the desert of its own lost anticipation; 
never call hope out simply to have it witness its 
own death; never create faith that reason will one 
day call superstition. Eradicating the tree, pulls 
up the ground; crumbling ideas lacerate mind; 
lost hope blasts it, and dying faith is death. The 
juvenile mind will think, and thought will breed 
hope, and hope must have its faith. The winds 
do change in an instant, and whistle on in their 
new course as merrily as before, but mind exper¬ 
iences no felicity or ease in its whirl-winds of 
thought. The human mind is too dignified to 
love a change of a long established state. No one 
loves to confess errors, but where error does exist 
it is nothing less than dignity to confess it. 
Mind is not as susceptible as is sometimes 
supposed. The child should be brought up in 
the ways it should go; and then in later years 
it will not so easily depart from them. The 
mother is the great teacher of desires and pur¬ 
poses. Man seldom drifts into noble purposes: 
example leads him, and stimulates purpose even 
when education fails. A home with a mother 
unfit for imitation is no home. 

But a mothers defect as an example, may in 
part, be remedied by a series of good books for 
the children. How many youthful minds are 


Ideal Woman. 


103 


corrupted and destroyed by reading dime novels. 
Many a boy starts out on the paths of criminality, 
through some visionary book allowed in his own 
home. A library is indispensable, and a good 
book is life to a household. A great book is the 
next thing to a great soul. Mind products are the 
greatest and ripest of all fruit; feed the youths the 
thoughts of great men and not compel them to 
live on the husks and slush of society. Orna¬ 
menting the home beautifies the nation. Educa¬ 
tion in the home goes farther, spreads wider, 
ascends higher, and becomes truer than any other 
system of instruction. Mothers teaching, moth¬ 
er’s thoughts, and mother’s life, be it good or bad, 
is never forgotten; and a something always 
remembered cannot be without its effects. There 
is more in circumstances than parents recognize, 
or philosophers concede. Instruction should 
begin in the home, and only leave it to return, to 
embellish and enlighten a home. Home is the be- 
o-innino* and end of life; in it man is born, and in 
it he dies; and if man cannot arrange his birth- 
bed, why have it disarranged at death! 

The ideal mother must be a teacher of the 
greatest truths, of the greatest thought and life. 
She must be conversant with the great men and 
women; and know something of God, and believe 
in the teachings of Christ. We have spoken of 
her ability, her knowledge and her faith; but her 


104 


Signal Thoughts. 


crowning jewel is good disposition—disposition 
is everything. A man had better be dead and in 
his grave awaiting the resurrection morn, than to 
be ground down, tortured and massacred by a 
disagreeable woman. And shall it be said that 
a child had better not be born than to have a 
mother of bad disposition? No! Life irrespective 
of birth, is too sublime, and possibilities too great 
to stop for choice of birth. Man can forget his 
birth and thank God he was born. But a child 
had better die on its natal day than to be hounded 
aboutand lashed by mothers evil and uncontrolled 
temper. There is something in natural disposi¬ 
tion, but there is no sense in laying all the sins of 
the world at “Adamic Origin”. Dispositions can 
be cultivated, and disagreeable tempers controlled 
—not by referring every flare up of temper to 
parental sin, but by calling yourself a fool. 

The ideal woman has an even, calm and judicious 
deportment. Husband, on returning home, needs 
not wonder if wife is mad; and expect a hen-peck¬ 
ing; but to know ease and congratulations are 
awaiting him. Wife does not kiss him on the 
street and broomstick him in the home. She is 
too true, too sincere for that. She does not caress 
and call her children darlings before her neighbors, 
and then in the home call them rascals and dirty 
little devils. She is wife and mother once and 
always the same; not too good at times to be 


Ideal Woman . 


105 


trusted, but simply good unadulterated. A great 
soul she is; and a great soul is a great light in 
this world. Strangers need meet her but once 
to realize that she is a great woman and a noble 
mother. Mothers are a power, when men like 
Lincoln say, “All I am or can be, 1 owe to my 
mother.” Like Fantine, mothers love becomes 
so sacrificial, that it becomes tyrannical to self. 
There are more sacrificial altars in the homes than 
in the church; and mothers give themselves as a 
living sacrifice for their children. 

The ideal woman has grown old. Whereas she 
was once the center of activity and light, she is 
now the object of reverence. Her body is weak; 
her steps are tottering, and her nerves tremble; 
her great, true, and loving soul is not decay¬ 
ing, but casting off a few leaves to show its 
ripeness. The old associates cleave to her counsel 
and the young seek her freshness. 

Mother dies—friends and neighbors weep— 
children and close companions are too deeply 
affected for tears, and as statues they stand, cold! 
with intense feeling; minds cannot think of God, 
because mother was too good-like. She was too 
close, too near and too dear to raise the mind 
above her. She is dead, but she lived too noble 
a life for it to die. The prodigal son that could 
not be changed while she was alive, is converted 
by her death, and baptized in her life. Mother is 


106 Signal Thoughts. 

not dead; but alive. She has only left this world 
to recede from her life, that it might be seen in 
its brightest light. 

Mothers name is not recorded in national his¬ 
tory; but written on the hearts of the family and 
transmitted in goodness from generation to 
generation, until her praise is sung on earth long 
after the angels of heaven have received her soul. 
A soul just begins to live when it dies; at death 
it casts out a flood of life that inundates more vice 
than it did while it was on earth. Sincerity and 
purpose begins to live anew, errors and sin recede 
and nothing but the best or the worst live after 
death. 


Social and Financial Restlessness. 


107 


SOCIAL AND FINANCIAL 
RESTLESSNESS. 


Nomadic life was a life of ease. When man’s 
house had for its floor the surface of the earth, 
and for its covering the canopy of heaven, he 
craved no other castle. He was willing to pas¬ 
sively stand by and let nature run its destined 
course. There was a tranquillity in antiquity that 
the present cannot realize. Social distinction was 
not so grievously marked; equality, not superior¬ 
ity was the general rule. The nomad needed no 
law, because he did nothing but what was for his 
own pleasure, or that of societies. He loved too 
much the ease and jollity of a pastoral life to be 
aggressive; he would not exert himself for social 
prestige. Honor and fame in no condition could 
arouse him to sleeplessness; social allurements 
did not beckon him on, or financial greed entice 
him. He had no great anticipation that was 
subjected to an infinite number of means for its 
materialization;—forgetting the past and indiffer¬ 
ent to the future, he lived wholly in the present. 
He was happier than a philosopher, and richer 
in contentment than a millionaire. Civilization 
brought duty, grandeur and life, but with it came 



io8 Signal Thoughts . 

restlessness. Before its advent, great social wars 
and financial conflicts were unknown. It lifted 
the curtain to the scenery of evil, as well as to 
that of good. Advanced civilization has its 
advanced activity, and advanced activity its in¬ 
creased restlessness. 

Though history portrays man as apparently at 
ease in the nomadic state, yet man is by nature 
restless; and the conditions and circumstances of 
the present age are conducive to that restless¬ 
ness. We are in the midst of a great social 
and financial agitation that is more intense and 
more vital than actual warfare. The social circle 
is far from being at ease. There is at present a 
great war among the various classes of society. 
But the vital war is the war of the individual. 
Man is in society and instead of being satisfied 
with his own state or vocation, and feeling that 
he is holding a trust in the chain of universal 
obligation that is as important and honorable as 
any other, he wilts under lost ambition and hope, 
and declares his position menial and other men’s 
honorable and worthy of his efforts and if need 
be, his good name. I care not what be man’s 
status in society or governmental position, he is 
not satisfied, he is continually longing to be some¬ 
one else, or hold some other position in life. 
Few are calm in their chosen profession; and there 
is a mad rush for a change. Men out of office 


Social and Financial Restlessness. 109 

clamor for civil service reform, and men in office 
argue against it. Anticipation is no more than 
realized until realization is dissatisfied and begins 
anew its anticipations. And so the individual is 
perpetually contending. Social rewards are 
gained and then they reveal their littleness, and 
the possessor says they are not what I expected; 
they don’t stand the wear as recommended. I 
don’t want them, experience has taken off the 
premium and someone else must hold it. I will 
not tarry. I am after something better and greater. 
And he says I want this man’s position in society 
and then I will be satisfied. We magnify other 
men’s ease and minify our own. We are too much 
inclined to view with clear glasses our followman, 
whereas for ourselves we wear dark spectacles. 
We look across the street and say there is a 
man that enjoys life; he is always happy, provi¬ 
dence works for him. Why is it that I am destined 
to such bad luck, dark prospect and dire results? 
If I were in that man’s shoes I would be happy. 
And in fact the other man’s bright side is magni¬ 
fied and re magnified until the spectator actually 
becomes envious. And the very one that is 
supposed to be so felicitous, so contented and so 
wonderfully favored by luck, men and God, is 
verily boiling over with discontent, restlessness, 
and worldly displeasure. He had been looking 
at Mr. A. in the same light that Mr. A. had 


I IO 


Signal Thoughts . 


viewed him, but neither one knowing it they draw 
deadly aim and fire away at one another until the 
ghost is driven out, or the disputants’ claim lost. 
Individual contention is beyond legislation; law 
can never alleviate, nor judicial courts can never 
reach those internal struggles of mind versus 
mind. Civil society is strained. Fashion is doing 
its fiendish work; opinions are often reaping 
where they have never sown. 

The dude is about the only happy man, and he 
hasn’t enough brains to be otherwise. But there 
is even a restlessness among the dudes, as they 
are afraid some one will appear more dudish than 
they; and what a strife among dudes—neckties, 
hats, collars, coats and pants are styled just to the 
occasion, or else there is no comfort taken in the 
entertainment—restlessness in every sphere and 
circle of society. The lean man wants to be fat, 
and the fat man poor; the one takes prepared 
food to produce fat and the other takes anti fat— 
anything to be something else than what we are. 
There is no particular dishonor in being a horse 
trader, but there are soul traders—there is where 
the dishonor lies. Souls by desiring to be other 
men are continually pitching their tents toward 
“Sodom”. Pity and shame on the man that is 
forever saying, I wish I were Mr. So and So, or 
in Mr. So and So’s place. There is not enough 
naturalness to give ease to society. Artificiality is 


Social and Financial Restlessness . 111 

a disease that is producing an insanity beyond 
the cure of the reformer. 

The political arena is subject to the same rest¬ 
lessness as the rest of society. The legislative 
hall no sooner greets the politician, than he wants 
to be something else. The world has seen him as a 
legislator; that is enough, he wants a different 
position so that the world can have another look 
at him. Public attention is all that some men 
crave, and it makes but little difference if it be in 
the halls of Congress or the courts of accusation* 
Popularity of any kind is preferred to popularity 
of no kind. Eagerness of renown is an epidemic: 
that costs life; and what is greater the char¬ 
acter of life. Competition is legitimate, but 
contention is not. Activity is proper, but strife 
is not. 

This evil of discontent has worked its way inta 
the very centers and vitals of society—the home* 
Husband and wife are agitated by it; domestic 
relations affected; children driver: from home 
because father and mother do not believe in 
following the trend of society. Parents think the 
children are too gay and too modernized, and the 
children believe the parents are too antiquated 
and fogish. The gray hairs think the young are 
wrong, and the young say the old are wrong. 
The old say they ought to know, because they 
are old, and in fact they ought, but the simple 


I 12 


Signal Thoughts. 

fact that they are old is no proof that they do. 
The young say the old don’t know because the 
old fogies have been living in Egyptian dark¬ 
ness all their lives, and they don’t know anything 
about modern civilization. How often you have 
seen an old man and a youth debating, and the 
old man using as his strongest point the fact that 
he is older and ought to know, and of course the 
boy thinks that is just why the old man don’t 
know. Shame on both; what does truth care 
about man’s age! How can the truth of the im¬ 
mortality of the soul be affected by the age of the 
disputer or accepter? What does truth care how 
old or how young you are if you are right, and if 
you are wrong it can have no respect for your 
age! Experience has its worth, but often that 
which is called experience is nothing but lack of 
experience. 

In connection with this great social agitation, 
there is a financial restlessness that has become 
the normal state of the commercial world. Fev¬ 
ered excitement is running up and down the 
avenues of trade ; men are anxious, nervous, 
excited and hostile. They view everything in the 
light of dollars and cents; commercial passions 
are dominating the activity of the present age— 
competition is becoming stronger and stronger. 
The energy of the time is bent toward wealth. 
Mammon is the true god and none other will it 


Social and Financial Restlessness. 113 

have. Never before in the history of the world 
was there such restlessness in financial circles. The 
globe is all afire with the zeal of worldly gain. 
Intensity of purpose is the characteristic feature. 
Touch the pocket-book of the world and it is 
tenderer than the sympathy of the heart. Whereas 
one cent will move man to action, the love of 
Christ will not stir him. Wealth is acquired 
and accumulated; its votaries have had marvelous 
success. Millions of dollars mark the fruit of toil, 
houses are built and palaces reared—plenty marks 
the foot prints of man’s daily toil. Poverty is 
scarcely known in our land, and what little there 
is Christianity soon relieves. Ennui is not char¬ 
acteristic of the age. We are not a lazy people, 
rather nervous and excited—not inactive, but 
restless. 

Man financially is not satisfied with his busi¬ 
ness; he thinks his fellowman is making more 
money, and he longs for an exchange. The 
farmer thinks the merchant is making a fortune, 
and the merchant believes the farmer is reaping 
millions. The dry goods man wants to be a 
grocery man, and the shoe man a druggist. 

There is a conflict among the different spheres 
of activity—profession arrayed against profession, 
avocation clamoring against avocation, and what 
is infinitely worse, toil tyrannizing over toil—an 
active and progressive warfare within the very 


Signal Thoughts . 


114 

vitals of society ; capital and labor, clutched in 
bull-dog tenacity, are walking up and down the 
avenues of trade, whereas they ought to clasp 
hands as two lovers strolling up and down a lovers 
lane. Capital is the result, the product, the child 
of labor; for capital to throttle labor is leaving a 
child without nourishment: for labor to gag capi¬ 
tal is leaving labor without future support. 
Capital is not only the child of labor, but the very 
bride to increasing labor. They ought not to 
contend with one another—they can’t afford it, 
but the great conflict is going on, assuming 
more gigantic proportions, and waxing warmer 
until nations are steeped in their own life 
blood. Capital against labor is bad, but labor 
versus labor is worse. What a wonderful mis¬ 
conception labor has of labor! What mistaken 
ideas! What is the trouble, and what is the 
remedy? 

The hod-carrier with no idea, save that of 
consciousness of burden, with no great thought 
to sustain or encourage his weary efforts, is ready 
to believe that the man above him is a tyrant. It 
is discontent, thoughtlessness and misconceptions 
that cause strikes. The man that makes five or 
six dollars per day, and has no thought of the 
greatness of life and its obligations, is much more 
apt to strike than the man working for one dollar 
per day and, while toiling, is thinking of the great- 


Social and Financial Restlessness . 115 

ness of life and its obligations, and the joy of his 
family. 

This great conflict we are in is a war of 
labor. The hod-carrier is carrying his hod and 
by chance a doctor goes by; it is not labor looking 
upon a doctor, it is labor looking upon labor, but 
it is not so considered. The hod-carrier, seeing 
the doctor go by, swears eternal vengeance, calling 
him a thief, a robber and a man that feloniously 
lives off the honest earnings of the poor people. 
He thinks the doctor has a perpetual picnic. And 
the very doctor that is supposed to have such a 
jolly good time, has spent hundreds of dollars, 
sat up late at nights and become nervously dys¬ 
peptic in order to acquire sufficient knowledge to 
doctor mankind. And that is not all, the doctor is 
called out into the dark and cold to doctor the 
hod-carrier, who thinks the doctor lives in the 
Elysian fields of paradise, and the doctor finds his 
patient in the agony of pain and the heat of fever. 
He sees that the life of his patient is at stake; he 
gives his best treatment, and returns for miles 
through the dark and cold until he finds himself 
at home and in his bed, but his pillow gives him 
no rest for he is thinking of his patient. Morning 
comes, but no sleep to the doctor, and he goes a 
long journey over rocky roads to see his patient 
again. He administers anew; everything is becom¬ 
ing more complicated, more serious, more critical. 


116 Signal Thoughts. 

He is thinking. He has grown nervous through 
exhaustion and weariness, and on his way home 
he passes the farmer, and receives the same 
estimation that the hod-carrier gave him. The 
doctor has his patient on mind until life becomes 
a burden, and he wishes his profession had the 
ease of the hod-carrier or farmer. The doctor 
returns, his patient is about the same; he again 
returns—the patient is a little better—hopes are 
dawning. By and by the man is raised from his 
supposed death-bed — the doctor did it by skill 
through ceaseless and nervous labor. But never 
a cent does he get—no thanks save the curses 
that are thought due his bonanza of a profession. 
A conflict of labor! 

The farmer’s daughter has been sent into the 
back field to hoe the cabbage patch. She has 
endured the intense heat of the sun and the 
exhaustion of the work. She is tired, restless and 
impatient, and on her way home, she passes the 
schoolhouse of her youth and sees the teacher. 
Envy at once takes possession of the farmer girl’s 
heart, and she says what a nice time a school¬ 
teacher has—sit in the house, in the shade all day 
long—no cabbage patch to hoe, no cows to milk, 
no dishes to wash and no baking to do—I tell 
you if I could vote, I would vote less tax for those 
high-toned, lazy school-teachers. See the great 
conflict of labor! That very teacher has worked 


Social and Financial Restlessness . 117 

hard all day and probably part of the night, and 
what is worse, unnerved and irritated—one little 
urchin has made her life miserable, and instead 
of going home in the composure and ease imag¬ 
ined by the farmer girl, she is broken down in 
health by just such day’s work. Her nights give 
her no rest; she takes her school to bed with her, 
and her brain is fevered in nervousness, and she 
wishes for the composure and ease contingent to 
the farmer girl’s lot. It is prison to school-teach¬ 
ers to sit in the schoolhouse and see the farmer 
girls go in top buggies to town. It is a conflict 
of labor. 

Even so-called Christianity sits in its pews and 
begrudges the pastor the salary it pledged itself 
to give. It says, I must work hard for my money, 
and won’t give it to the preacher. He makes his 
money easy; he has enough; he don’t earn any-^ 
thing anyway. He works but one day in the week 
and the rest of the time he can visit his family or 
someone else’s family, or if he wants to, he can 
loaf on the streets. He has sort of a general picnic, 
and I guess I won’t pay him anything. Ah! that 
poor preacher has worked hard all week— 
deprived himself of sleep to prepare a good 
sermon for the man that has been kicking all week 
about preachers and resolved not to pay. Preach¬ 
ing is no picnic, but if done right, it is the hardest 
work in the catalogue of professions. And often 


118 Signal Thoughts . 

the preachers life is made miserable by some old 
hysterical woman, or some sanctified sinner, who 
thinks the preacher is not converted. What a 
clamor of opinions within the very doors of the 
church. 

“Love of money is the root of all evil.” The 
cent calls for a dollar, the dollar speaks for the 
hundreds, the hundreds clamor for the thousands, 
and the thousands groan for the millions. Before 
the youths of our land are scarcely awake to the 
reality of life, they are found on the highway to 
wealth. The whole population is mad in its 
search for riches. Men are treading on each others’ 
characters, and slandering and libeling each others’ 
families, in order to bridge and culvert the road 
of wealth. A cent thrown into the financial sea, 
produces a torrent on the shores of restlessness. 
The business world never sleeps, the night is 
steaming with trade, sunset brings no repose but 
a renewed force. It is work more, eat quick, and 
sleep less. Business rush has driven out business 
integrity. The financial world is living too fast 
and the moral too slow. The speed of the former 
is killing the latter, and the apathy of the latter 
is demoralizing the former. Excitement is run¬ 
ning riot; men are in the financial cauldron and the 
witches of gain are feeding the flames. 

Men think they would be satisfied if they had 
a certain amount of money, but as a rule, more 


Social and Financial Restlessness . 119 

money gives more dissatisfaction. Monopolists 
are the most restless when they have the biggest 
supply on hand. Then they begin to fear possibili¬ 
ties, whereas before they never dreamed of 
probabilities. It is forever and everlasting a rush, 
the wheels of trade are continually rolling on the 
streets of commerce—the Sabbath gives no rest 
—death no let up—business unwillingly stops to 
let a funeral procession pass by. Children are 
brought out of school, and mothers out ofhomes, 
that business may prosper more rapidly. It’s busi¬ 
ness from morn until night and from night until 
morning. Money is the standard whereby man 
are measured. If he has no money he is no man. 
Dollars and cents cast their votes more effectively 
than brains. Men want to be rich and they desire 
nothing else, and they will become as beggars but 
that they will have money. Much money is not 
necessary in order to have misers. The man of a 
mite is often as miserly as the miser with his 
thousands. A man without a cent can have a mi¬ 
serly disposition. 

The financial world is winding its tendrils about 
the social, and both are suffering within sound of 
one another’s groans. A great danger to our 
commonwealth is this nervous and fevered rest¬ 
lessness. Lives are shortened and virtue suffers; 
haste marks everything. We need more of the 
tranquillity of the past and less of the rush of the 


I 20 


Signal Thoughts . 


present. We want no indifference but calmness. 
We want better and greater men in theory, and 
then we shall have better and greater men in 
practice. Theory is bound to direct practice; 
creeds and doctrines shape mind. 


Mans Greatest Conflict. 


I 2 I 


MAN’S GREATEST CONFLICT NOT 
WITH MAN. 

On the opposite side of the Atlantic’s turbulent 
waters lies the isolated island of St. Kilda. It 
was but yesterday that the most refrangible rays 
of civilization dawned upon its shores. The 
white winged dove of commerce has never rested 
in its harbors. Yet the inhabitants say they 
would not exchange it for any worldly paradise. 
There pleasure sits enthroned; contentment rules; 
desires have not transgressed their bounds; am¬ 
bition has not become their lord. As far as they 
have gone, their journey appears to them to be in 
perfect harmony with nature. 

Whether a change be wrought by the personal 
interposition of man or by nature itself, history 
tells us there is a change. When a being real or 
imaginary destroys the relation between them 
and the object of their desires, it produces a most 
tragical scene. The emerald island has now 
written its name in the book of bloody battles. 
It is now contending for supremacy. Thus from 
Marathon to Waterloo have decisive battles been 
fought and won; conflict in which cannon roared, 
cavalry clashed, and infantry destroyed; conflicts 

in which mortal blood flowed from the temples of 
y 



1 22 


Signal Thoughts. 


immortal spirits: earthly ground fertilized by the 
blood of mortal men. Scenes that make man’s 
blood curdle as he reads their history. But these 
are only external battles on terrestrial ground, 
between men who are by nature equal. There 
are conflicts that are more terrible than these— 
spiritual conflicts upon spiritual grounds, not be¬ 
tween man and man, but between man and his 
Maker. A contest in which victory is ever on 
the same side. For man, to arbitrarily demand 
of God a secret that is to be forever a secret, may 
be sufficient to provoke the vengeance of Him 
that holds it. But who would censure an honest 
•soul, in search of fundamental truths, for crying 
iunto its God, what is man that thou art mindful 
of him? There are within the theatre of every 
;soul more and greater battles than human history 
over has or can record. This world is but a part 
of man. There is more of him than it can see; 
more virtue and more vice, higher ideals and 
nobler thoughts; lower desires and baser intents 
■than he has ever revealed. 

From the cradle to the grave, life’s pathway is 
.strewn with mortal conflicts heroically and nobly 
■fought with the best of mental forces in the fear 
of an Almighty God. Could you unmask one 
soul and behold the contest raging—between in¬ 
finite and finite forces—the scene would appear 
pitiable. Words cannot portray; the artist’s brush 


Alans Greatest Conflict . 


123 


cannot picture; reason itself trembles in contem¬ 
plating a scene like that of a lovely mother 
praying earnestly and sincerely to her God to be 
delivered from a suicidal death—and yet such her 
death. You need not go to nature or revelation 
for a mystery. This was one to J. G. Holland. 
Reason failed him, faith did not take up his cause, 
and he said, “ If He (God) heard not the prayer 
of such a lovely saint as she I mourn, mine would 
but rouse His vengeance.” Yet ere he died he 
bowed the knee to the God he once cursed. Such 
are the phases that the conflicts of mortal man 
sometimes take. Again, man will look up to his 
God, saying though I perish, may Thy laws and 
Thy commandments be fulfilled. He is pleased 
that there is a Being above man—justice cannot 
be established and maintained by injustice—he 
calls Him just, for admitting that all is wrong, 
that man has found a fallacy in the order of nature. 
How did he discover it, and what has he gained? 
He has nothing to substitute that is better; he 
cannot, as it were, precede himself. He may 
have high and lofty ideals that are ever lifting 
him upward, but he is at no time higher than the 
reality. 

Man has not at all times the proper means to a 
desired end. True, in his infancy he is well pleased 
at being confined to the earth—no possibility of 

lling, and with a feeling of certainty he makes 


124 Signal Thoughts. 

his first step upon the ladder of abstraction—the 
concrete is yet vividly before him. Thus step by 
step he proceeds cautiously, reasonably and what 
he supposes to be logically; and from his attained 
heights he beholds that the waves of doubt be¬ 
neath are roaring, and he crys out, where am I ? 
What am I, and how did I get here? And 
nature as well as doubts must be governed by 
man. He is so constituted that he must bridle 
his appetites, desires and passions, or they will 
govern him. Ambition, the very thing that 
makes man, if uncontrolled, leads to destruction. 
Life is a wonderful struggle amid wonderful 
adversity. France united, fought the battle of 
Waterloo, united, bore the defeat. Napolean 
alone and solitary fought those wonderful battles 
of St. Helena and bore the results. 

But life is not all a conflict. True, man has 
doubts and trials, but there is nothing ignoble in 
an honest doubt, and nothing lost in a noble 
struggle. Doubt alone distinguishes him from 
the beasts of the fields. What shall we say of 
his satisfactory experience? Of his satisfactory 
inductions? We leave him as he is; wonderful but 
finite, strong yet weak, noble yet at times ignoble 
—a man, not a God. 


Alone. 


125 


ALONE. 


u Thou wast alone at the time of thy birth, 
thou wilt be alone in the moment of death; 
alone thou must answer at the bar of the inexor¬ 
able Judge.” 

Everything awaited man’s birth and man 
awaited nothing. Everything was to man antece¬ 
dent, nothing followed; with him creation ended. 
Thus he saw not creation, but creation greeted 
him. Alone he was at his birth and alone he 
must live. Only to feel a sensation of loneliness 
does the child for the first time open its eyes to 
the world; no friend can reach its mind; no 
mother can appease its anxiety. If it were happy 
it would not cry; it would have hope if it knew 
the power of a friend; it would not fear if it knew 
the love of a mother. But it does not; in its own 
meagerness and littleness and nothingness it is 
alone; even possibilities declare nothing. If the 
new born babe could speak, its first exclamation 
would be—What has happened?—I was not, and 
I am. I came from whence I know not—I am 
going whither I know not.—Where is my mother 
and who is my father? I see that much surrounds 



126 


Signal Thoughts. 


me—greatness beneath me—immensity above me 
—I do not understand this.—Who are you?—In 
fact who am I ? I feel as though nothing before 
me depended upon me, and I am as dead and 
solitary to the present as I am to the blank past. 
I am alone; must I live alone?—I would like to 
see something I understood, and some one I 
knew. This light to my eyes is darkness—these 
hands that are trying to fondle and caress me, 
come against me like the four corners of the uni¬ 
verse—I am tender—I feel as though I would 
die—I am perplexed and dumfounded—this being 
they call my mother, I must learn to know—I am 
alone and who will deliver me from this loneli¬ 
ness? I will cry unto my mother, but they tell 
me she is dead. 

But to be alone in birth is nothing in compari¬ 
son to being alone in life, for at birth are the 
administering hands of angels, whereas in life, 
angels come but to visit, and legions of demons 
do make their habitation. The child’s first 
sorrow is his own—no one claims it, no one wants 
it, and no one can share it; a mother may think 
she is bearing it, but it is sorrow of her own. 
Mothers may prevent or throw off grief, but they 
can never help bear the burden. You can stand 
as a sentinel to a soul, but you cannot pierce the 
“Trojan” wall. You can die on a cross of calvary 
but you cannot die my death. Life is too great 


Alone. 


127 


to ever miss a link of space, a moment of time, 
or an item of realization. It is ever taking in its 
own length, and its own width; its own depth and 
its own height—possession is rights, and realiza¬ 
tion absolute title. Life is too great to live with 
anything but its own self; personality is too 
strong in identity to be robbed of experience. 

Friendship can help and friends do succor, but 
there is a line where friendship retreats and friends 
do fail. Personal experience cannot be followed 
home; at the door steps of self the world may- 
stand, but not a soul can enter. Alone we are 
and alone we must remain. When the burdens 
of life begin to lacerate, friends must leave—help 
there is none. Souls can live together but not in 
one another—live in sight and that is all. You 
can have a comparative idea, but you know noth¬ 
ing of my soul’s experience, and I nothing of 
yours. All have their troubles and each his own 
trials. On the outskirts of life we may have 
friends and fpes, but in the center and vital part 
we are solitary and alone. There is a solitude 
that is terrible; shake it off we would, drive it back 
if we were able, but like a thief in the night it 
steals upon us and drains the last rivulet of vitality. 
How often the soul feels as though the world had 
neglected it, friends forgotten it and God forsaken 
it. Have you ever been in dejected loneliness? 
If not, do not go to get the experience. It is too 


128 


Signal Thoughts . 


awful, too sorrowful to experiment upon. To feel 
once as though you were the most miserable 
creature in the universe of God, is too often. 
Man lives alone the center of life as much so as 
though he were the only living being in creation. 

The child takes on his troubles; he has diffi¬ 
culties; his very toys are a plague to his life; on 
the play-ground he meets his Waterloos. When 
does disappointment begin? Rather, when was 
there not disappointment? Man by sinful birth 
has missed his first pleasures; the cradle has its 
pains, its agonies and its death. Sin is loneliness. 
Evil disposition rises but to spread its meanness, 
and then return to seek its own. A disagreeable 
temperament is uncomfortable, mean, tortuous, 
and disagreeable to its companions, but it is a 
thousand times more disagreeable to itself. You 
cannot dispose of self; the meanest man in the 
world is the meanest to himself and he feels it. 
The biggest liar in the universe is a bigger cheat 
to himself than to the persons deceived—hypo¬ 
crisy never emigrates. Murder often speaks in 
insanity. 

Two men labor together; they help, they be¬ 
friend and they love one another. Accident 
mutilates the one and he is alone in the torrents 
of pain. The sympathy of the other is doing its 
work, but the mangled man cannot feel it because 
it cannot reach him. The old comrade says I wish 


Atone . 


129 


I could help the poor man, if I could I would 
willingly suffer for him, but no he cannot, and in 
love he prepares a cot for his sick companion and 
duty bids him pass on. The Shilos have had 
their millions; the Elbas and St. Helenas are 
densely populated. Defeat has no companion; 
to the vanquished, death says remain; to the 
victors, life says come on. A soldier is shot down 
—a city destroyed, and the army marches on 
triumphantly. A good soldier never looks back¬ 
ward; a great soldier dying, bids his comrades 
march on and leave him spend his dying groans 
on the desert air; for a bloody battle-field can aid 
him in suffering* as much as the love of friends. 
To him friends out of sight are as near and dear 
as friends at hand. He has recoiled within the 
circle of his own identity, where neither friend nor 
foe, nor angels, nor demons can do their work—he 
is alone. 

Every soul, from the most inactive and menial 
to the highest and most virtuous, has its troubles. 
Every one has seen the dark clouds of reversed 
anticipation—success whispered, but defeat spoke 
aloud—glory showed its feather, but the plumage 
was total despair. Day-time may have its 
consolation but its nights are its own. In the 
depths of nature man is alone; in the midst of 
social gaiety loneliness peeps forth. You cannot 
drive it away. You cannot suppress it; yo u 


130 Signal Thoughts. 

cannot kill it. Where a soul pens itself up and 
gives itself a lashing there is where remorse 
begins. No yoke galls like the one of self-accu¬ 
sation; no serpent bites like regret. The verdict 
of a jury is nothing in comparison to the verdict 
of self. Juries may say not guilty, but it is of no 
avail if conscience says, guilty. If you want to 
punish a criminal, deliver him over to his own 
conscience; if you want to shame a man enlighten 
his conscience; if you want to damn a sinner turn 
loose upon him his own conscience. Every man is 
at times alone—and those are awful times; it is 
turning bright light on a distorted subject. Some 
shrink ; some cannot endure it ; some die. It 
takes a great soul to stand long in its own lone¬ 
liness. 

When two minds become as one there is 
happiness, but when death breaks the tie they are 
left one in death and one in life—then is sorrow 
and bereavement. Alone was the first cry in the 
cradle, and alone is the story of life. Life often 
lives upon its own vitality; it frequently shuts out 
the consolation and esteem of the world, and 
retreats within itself to gnaw upon its own sinews 
and drink its own life-blood. The streets in day 
time are crowded with a mass of humanity that 
appears to be one in activity and happiness, but 
at night each head is pillowed as one; gain is 
contemplated by day and loss by night. When 


Alone . 


131 

the streams of life are testing their embankments, 
man is alone, and in the agonies and throes of 
death he has no companion. 

If man is not alone, who is with him? If in 
the isolations of life he has a helping companion, 
who is it? If grief can be divided, who can do 
it? If self-accusation can be made tender, who 
can do it? If disappointment can be made easy, 
who can do it? If sorrow and bereavement can 
be felt as a blessing, who has so realized it? If 
a mother can stand on the brink of death and see 
her beloved child pass away, who is she? Who 
would ask a friend to follow into the depths of 
bitterness ? When the smooth couch refuses 
sleep, and the pillow gives forth pain and torment, 
what does human comfort amount to? If man is 
not alone in death, who is with him? It is sweet 
to die for friends, but it is simply an exchange of 
time; and what does time amount to in death. 
Damon and Pythias had both to die. They say 
Christ died for us, but we are alive and subject 
to death. Christ passed through the dark valley 
of the shadow of death, and returned and gave 
to the world the glorious news that death was 
swallowed up in victory. But He did not say that 
for you and for me He would repeat the journey. 
He lightened up the way, but we solitary and 
alone must tread the silent path. If Christ chose 
not to allow us to pass by the valley of death, 


1 3 2 


Signal Thoughts . 


who can? We are here in life, and who can ex¬ 
pect to escape its experience? 

We are alone, but there is a solitude that is 
not loneliness. The thoughts of solitude are not 
for sale, not to be shared or divided. The 
greatness of life, the nobleness of character and 
the power of virtue are indivisible. We are alone 
in pain, but when release comes it is all ours; 
we are alone in sorrow, but enjoyment is all ours; 
we are alone in discontent, but satisfaction is all 
ours; we are alone in bereavement, but exultation 
is not divided; we labor alone, but the fruit is all 
ours; we are alone in death, but the victory is all 
ours. 

In solitude is where we find the greatness of 
life; men retreat to it to become wise, and some 
are unwise because they never seek it. Do not 
drive a soul from the confines of solitude; let it live 
awhile within itself to see the great wells of life 
within. On the steps of solitude the angels stand, 
and in the vestibule God speaks. Rob a man of 
his solitude if you want to drive him away from 
God. Nobility is born within the house of soli¬ 
tude; reason stands on the porch and virtue on 
the dome. Would that it had more tenants; 
would that more would bow at its shrine and be 
baptized in the pure streams of its life. On the 
silver streets of thought, and in the golden avenues 
of virtue are no highway robbers. Life is not an 


Alone . 


133 


organization or corporation wherein interest and 
gains are divided among the stock-holders. It is too 
real, too wonderful to be shared as a dividend. Soli¬ 
tude is not isolation, but communion; it is not death, 
but life; its great secret is nobleness to the solitary. 

To be alone in birth, to be alone in life, or to 
be alone in death is nothing, but to be alone at 
the bar of the “inexorable Judge”; that is some¬ 
thing, and something awful to a soul unmasked 
before God and having the sunlight of heaven 
streaming down upon a carcass of a soul that 
ought to be flush with life—that is infinite Pun¬ 
ishment. They talk about mercy; they preach 
about mercy; they pray for mercy, and they 
expect to get to heaven on mercy, but heaven is 
not built of mercy. We are as we are and not 
as we might or ought to be. Mercy cannot change 
a man’s state, it can but allow an opportunity for 
a change. There is too much banking on the 
salvation of mercy. It is no doubt a great act to 
give mercy, but in itself there is no greatness or 
nobility in receiving it. It eliminates us from no 
effects; it adds nothing. We are alone even in 
its arms. Nothing can separate us from the love 
of God; nothing can separate us from the torment 
of hell—absolutely nothing but to exterminate 
that love or uproot that evil. It is life within life 
that gives greatness; virtue lives within the soul 
and perfect peace within the conscience. 


134 


Signal Thoughts. 


TRUE WORTH. 


Living in the intellectual focus of four thousand 
decades of mental experience, when the external 
world has became subservient to man, causes 
understood by their effects, things ultimate known 
by things present; it naturally appears to the 
conceited mind, that if the first case were 
removed, not only would man be able to govern 
the material world, but qualified for the judgeship 
of the moral. 

When the divine commission of old, “Judge 
ye not,” was given, it not only then included the 
present generation, but the past and those to 
come. And the nineteenth century with all its 
advantages, boastings and conceitedness is no 
more qualified to judge of true worth than the 
old “Egyptian” or the intelligent “Grecian”. 
But it is natural for man to usurp authority, and 
we have more judges in this age than doers; and 
instead of man dying of old age, he is judged out 
of existence before maturity. 

We may however congratulate ourselves that 
this judgment is not permanent, for frequently the 
world’s heroes practice chicanery, and the true 
hero is unheard, unknown, and often dies unla¬ 
mented. In gilded letters the world writes the 



True Worth. 


135 


names of her heroes, her kings, her martyrs, her 
sages and her philosophers. In simple and 
undecorated letters truth writes the names of her 
followers; it may be a servant to the world’s king, 
an honest Christian converted by the foolishness 
of worldly philosophy, or some back-woodsman 
who lived without and earthly reward, and with¬ 
out a tear from humanity was laid in his last 
resting place. Such are the world’s true heroes. 
Again might it well be said that, “the world does 
not know her greatest men.” True she has 
erected monuments in memory of her heroes, 
but some undecorated spot, as the poet has 
said :— 

“ Some mute inglorious Milton here mav lie, 
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.” 

No page of history is ornamented by his name; 
no school boy learns a lesson from his heroic 
deeds; no cannon sounds over his tomb, but lib 
has returned to dust the end of all worldly glory, 
and “ truly he has his reward.” As man can see 
but a part of the beauties of nature, so he can 
read but a brief volume ofthe world’s true heroes— 
the rest a secret to the mortal eye. Yet we have 
judges; and not only the judged, but the judges, 
in their own understanding are misled. 

We in this age, are as fond of popularity as 
were the Tudors of England; they in search of 
gold, seeing a man apparently poor, demanded 


Signal Thoughts. 


136 

money on the grounds that he must be saving, 
and if apparently rich there was no question about 
it. So in the estimation of true worth, seeing a 
man apparently unintelligent, you draw’what ap¬ 
pears to you to be a logical conclusion—a fool; 
if apparently wise you hesitate thinking he might 
be otherwise. A little breeze of glory will produce 
a storm of reputation, whereas a cyclone of true 
worth will not start a wave. The seeker of true 
worth has no place in the arena of politics; he is 
subject to ridicule as were the apostles; he speaks 
the truth at the expense of political life. He 
never sees the political paradise; he is vetoed 
long before that time and becomes a dependent 
subject.. To be a man in this field means a man 
without a known record—of hot-bed growth,— 
one who cannot endure the intense heat or cold 
of the season,—a man of effect; one who prophy- 
sies a political reform, and allows eternity to await 
its fulfillment. 

Truth—there is nothing of its like. Truth is 
truth; truth ever has been truth; and truth ever 
will be truth. It needs no voucher, no supporter, 
nor no martyr. It is its own voucher, its own 
supporter, and its own salvation. Never try to 
change truth—a lie is impossible. To lie in fact is 
a lie in truth. Truth cannot be robbed or shaded 
by lies. It is as old as thought and as young as 
mind development. It is as imm-ortal as immor- 


True Worth . 


137 


tality itself and as eternal as eternity itself. Even 
more; if immortality were to die and eternity to 
cease, truth in its full plumage would still go on— 
kill it—no !—die, never ! It is more than immor¬ 
tal; it is more than eternal, it is truth. Truth 
ever has and ever will reign;—all things that are 
exist through truth—wrong came into the world 
through the channel of truth; not that wrong is 
right or right responsible for wrong, but that evil 
is wrongful truth. Truth is as powerful in vice 
as in virtue,—truth saves and truth kills. Truth 
never hesitates. It is as strong in hell as in heaven. 
It fears nothing; it has no respect; it rewards 
heaven; it judges hell. It is omnipotent; it will 
hallow your soul or damn it, just as truth says.. 
Amid external truth lives moral truth; to soul! 
there is truth and the truthfulness of falsity. 

Morality makes true worth—morality is every¬ 
thing. It is truth; it is heaven. Immorality is 
nothing—more than nothing it is less than nothing 
—it is hell. Morality is the stuff from which charac¬ 
ter is made, and heaven is built up of character. 
Falsification is true to itself, but false to truth. 

True worth is not eloquent, not noisy or showy, 
but as silent as a spirit, and yet mightier than the 
force that holds the planets in their orbits. It is 
the exponent of creation,—the beginning and the 
end; through it the world was made'and through 

it will it be judged. 

10 


133 


Signal Thoughts . 


IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL? 


Direct personality is a rarity in human history. 
Individuality does not number the individuals. 
External opinions opionionate, and ideas, take 
their sway and conquer individuals by the thous¬ 
ands. One effeminate idea afloat on the great 
sea of thought causes myriads to cease thinking 
and reverently follow wherever it may lead. 

History is not a record of individuality, but of 
individuality suppressed. Civil society and po¬ 
litical science are too often the work of a dema¬ 
gogue. Mankind ever has, and is waiting for 
some one to say something, so it can say “yes”! 
Men, like dumb driven cattle, are guided by the 
opinions of man; they neglect the exercise of 
their God given faculties, and sanction the 
hysterical ideas of a fanatic. A few strong char¬ 
acters have made the history of the world. One 
great philosopher shapes the philosophy of his 
age. One enthusiastic divine, be he strong or 
weak, formulates the theology of his church. 

Society is taught opinions and ideas instead of 
how to think. Classes of ideas are warring with 
each other; commercial business is contending 
with philosophy; philosophy with Christianity, 
and Christianity with all. Religion in all ages 



Is there a Personal Devil? 139 

has done much. Christianity in this age is doing 
wonderful things. But much more would be 
accomplished were it not for the foolishness of 
its advocates. The ignorance and foolishness of 
the pulpit is more detrimental to Christianity 
to-day than the combined phalanx of infidelity. 
The lowness of the intellectual standard of the 
pulpit, the foul slang of the preacher, and the 
illogical and unmetaphysical expressions of the 
minister produce negligence of duty rather than 
seriousness. The church must lead, not only in 
faith, but to be effective it must at least, be abreast 
in the great march of mental progression. I say 
it, not critically but painfully, the pulpit has pro¬ 
portionally more unqualified men than any other 
profession. In one sense, the idea of being called 
to preach is all right, but in another all wrong. 
And I am sorry to say the majority belongs to the 
latter class. It is a fact that some men, so 
mentally weak, that they can not earn a liveli¬ 
hood at anything; and instead of starting out to 
beg like honest men, they think that they are 
called to preach, and at once begin to belittle the 
cause of Christ and demand a salary. I attack 
not with hatred but with love, the men in the 
pulpit. But too often they forget that they are 
liable to err, and think what they say in the pulpit 
is all right simply because it is said in the pulpit. 
There is less preparation for the pulpit and in it, 


140 Signal Thoughts . 

than any other profession. There is too much 
guessing, too many statements without the reason¬ 
ing, too many conclusions without the line of 
argument; it fails to educate as it ought; it had 
better teach duty and present results, and instead 
of trying to locate heaven and hell in eternity, 
lift the curtain and let them be seen in this, 
world. 

The world has too many chances to criticise 
the church; and when it gives its criticism the 
church nor the world is not bettered. 

The secular world better cease condemning the 
church and condemn itself. History is full of 
world versus church—a continual war still waxing 
warm, and it can ever be expected. The secular 
world is ever striking at the creeds and doctrines 
of the church; the latter is ever trying to point 
out the sins of the former, and the former the 
errors of the latter. They do one another good, 
and they do one another harm; they impeach 
one another’s goodness, question one another’s, 
sincerity, and challenge one another’s ability. 

As to the existence of a personal devil the 
secular world and church disagree. Not so much 
the divines, but the church as a whole strenuously 
affirms and appears to think if it were beaten 
Christianity would suffer, if not lost. It loudly 
clamors of the reality of a personal devil, and the 
world says down with your devil. 


Is there a Personal Devil ? 


141 

How peculiar it is that the church should think 
'so much of its mission lies in the establishing and 
maintaining of the existence of a personal devil. 
The theology that teaches a universal Satan, 
outside of man’s sinful act, makes mankind less 
responsible and gives the church a less hopeful 
work, and the world strengthens its own moral 
obligation by teaching non-existence. 

Now to the direct question, Is there a personal 
devil? The “devil,” “Satan,” “tempter,” “the 
accuser,” “the serpent,” “the evil one,” “the ad¬ 
versary” and many more similar appellations are 
used. What do the mean? Or better, what 
does the person using them intend to have us 
understand ? A personality in some phase is 
certainly implied. Ask men as to their concep¬ 
tions of Satan, and you will find that every man 
has something of an idea; the term is used in 
theology and in every day conversation; they 
cannot escape having some kind of a notion as 
to it. 

Mythology and ancient history reveal concep¬ 
tions of personality of evil. Sin is about as old 
as man, and the sinner is as old as sin. 

Deity through interchanges of diversified con¬ 
ceptions attains “unity”. The once general 
diversity of evil spirits is no mental wonder; it is 
to-day too prevalent to allow antiquity to sur¬ 
prise us. 


142 


Signal Thoughts . 


The moment evil began mankind recognized it 
as such, and never disputed but that it was 
personal, but was ever failing to properly person¬ 
alize it. In Homeric times evil was attributed to 
the displeasure of the gods. “Poseidon (1) raged 
continually against godlike Odysseus, till he came 
to his own country,” “ But (2) come, let us here 
one and all take good counsel as touching his 
returning, that he may be got home; so shall 
Poseidon let go his displeasure, for he will in no 
wise be able to strive alone against all, in despite 
of all the deathless gods.” Speaking of Odysseus 
returning, “ But (3) that will the gods make hard for 
thee; for methinks thou shalt not pass unheeded 
by the Shaker of the Earth, who hath laid up 
wrath in his heart for thee, for raee at the blind- 
ing of his dear son.” Zeus says, “Lo (4) you now, 
how vainly mortal men do blame the gods! For 
of us they say comes evil, whereas they even of 
themselves through the blindness of their own 
hearts have sorrow beyond that which is or¬ 
dained.” 

In “ Prometheus Bound,” Prometheus attributed 
not his state to a personal devil, but to the stern 
will of Zeus. Thus, we see in early literature 


(1) Odyssey, B. & L., Page 1. 

(2) B & L., P. 3. 

(3) B & L., P. 175. 

(4) B & L., P. 2. 



Is there a Personal Devil? 


H 3 


when polytheism was so extended, evil was. 
attributed to some god; but that that god was not 
necessarily evil, but just as it suited his pleasure. 
Homer in the Odyssey and Aeschylus in Pro¬ 
metheus Bound, gave a clearer representation of 
the philosophy and origin of evil than did many 
of the writers of a much later period. 

A dualistic belief, if implied at all, was not as 
prevalent as was that of the Medes and Persians; 
for in their religion we find dualism in its complete 
sense. Mazdeism (5) taught the existence of two 
great principles—one good, the other evil; which 
were in perpetual and eternal conflict. Dualism (6) 
was the fundamental principle of Zoroasterism: 
two spirits; Ormazd and Ahriman both possess 
creative power—man in the centre of battle—man 
the creature of Ormazd. 

The two principles were persons; Ormazd' 7) was 
the creator of good and Ahriman of evil. Ahriman 
is uncaused, co-eternal with Ormazd and engaged 
in a perpetual warfare with him. (8) 9 Evil seemed 
most easily accounted for by the supposition of 
an evil person, thus Dualism had its birth. ^Ahri- 
man was the author of evil and death, causing sin 
in man and barrrenness upon the earth. Magism 

(5) Barnes’ General History, P. 97. 

(6) Britannica, Yol. 22, P. 822. 

(7) 7th Monarchy, P. 286. 

(8) Rawlenson’s Third Mon., P. 383. 

(9) Barnes’ G. H , P- 98. 



144 


Signal Thoughts . 


taught the worship of Ahriman, as an evil god 
must be appeased by honor and sacrifice. Still, (10) 
amid whatever corruptions the Dualistic faith was 
maintained, the supremacy of Ormazd was from 
first to last admitted. 

Ahriman retained from first to last the same 
character and position, neither rising into an 
object of worship nor sinking into a mere person¬ 
ification of evil.” Plato inquired into the religion 
of the Empire and found Ormazd and Ahriman 
still recognized as “Principles” contending with 
one another.” 

At the cradle of Polytheism were born the 
possibilities of Dualism; and materialization needs 
not long wait upon possibilities. Thus was con¬ 
ceived direct Dualism—a supreme personality of 
good, and likewise a supreme personality of evil. 
The conception of the god of good, was the same 
as the conception of the god of evil, save that the 
one was the god of good and the other the god 
of evil. Dualism lives to-day. It has had a con¬ 
tinual life and influence since its birth; ancient 
history .records it, and the present in part lives it. 

Now, is there a scriptural record of a personal 
devil? The first mentioning of anything that 
might be meant for a personal devil, is that of 
the serpent. * (11) Was it an external personal Satan, 


(10) Vol. II., 5th Mon., P. 362. 

(11) Gen., Chap. III. 



Is there a Personal Devil? 


H 5 


as tempter, or was the temptation simply a prin¬ 
ciple of evil within the human soul? Christianity 
as a rule has been teaching the existence of a 
personal devil. But is there one? 

In Scripture the word Satan, as a rule, is 
written with a capital, and as a rule the word 
devil, is not. Why so ? No one save the 
translators could know, and it is doubtful if they 
did. 

It might be that “ Satan ” meant the personality 
and “devil” the principle of evil. The word 
devil in the original Greek is dtafiokor meaning 
accuser. The Hebrew of it means to oppose; but 
these terms themselves give no light as to the 
conceptions intended. There is no metaphysical 
accuracy in the biblical terms, devil and Satan. 
No one could use terms so indifferently and be a 
successful metaphysician. Instead of attempting 
to reconcile reason to them, let us endeavor to 
harmonize them to reason. 

First, is there anything in the dualistic idea of 
devil and God being co-equal and co-eternal? It 
is true, if we admit that “One Being”, God, 
whose existence is unaccountable; we must admit 
that there might be another whose existence we 
do not understand, and that that other being 
might be evil as well as good. But we do know 
that the existence of two infinite beings at the 
same time is impossible; so God and Satan could 


46 


Signal Thoughts . 


not be equal, as we know God is infinite. There¬ 
fore Satan, if he existed, would be subject to the 
will of God, (we use the words devil and Satan 
as synonyms). Though eternity is not a criterion 
by which to judge infinity, Satan not being 
infinite might be eternal as far as lack of infinity 
is concerned, and he be a personality from the 
beginning; yet, eternal existence would be 
strong evidence of infinity, and likewise lack of 
infinity strong evidence of not eternal existence. 
It might be said that there is evil, which is true, 
and that evil must have a personality, which is 
also true. And why not attribute the evil within 
us to supreme evil personality as ultimate origin¬ 
ator, the same as the good within us is ultimately 
attributed to God? 

Looking at ourselves, even through sinful 
eyes, we intuitively discern that good is the 
original state of man. Conscience speaks of our 
obligation to do good and refrain from evil. 
To our sinful states of mind there is no conscious 
obligation, or even fealty to evil outside of 
ourselves. There is no motive to do evil save 
that of our own satisfaction. In a state of good¬ 
ness the mind realizes a sense of duty to a Higher 
Being, whereas in a state of evil it has no 
corresponding duty outside of self. It feels no 
obligation to a so-called Satan or even to owe 
him fealty. Murderers and.thieves feel obligated 


Is there a Personal Devil? 


147 


to one another as to the object of their work; 
likewise, if a Satan existed, would not man, 
striving for a sinful object feel obligated to him? 
There is but one God and but one originator; and 
all effect is but the direct or indirect will of God. 
If there is a Satan he is finite, and as he is finite 
he must have a creator, if all things are ordained 
of God. If there is an original Satan; that is, if 
Satan’s original nature is Satanic, and God the 
originator of all things; He must own the devil as 
His own son. And in fact w r e have the “Bogo- 
mili theory” which taught that Satanael was the 
first-born Son of God. 

Is there a personal devil? In the sense that 
there is a supreme personality of evil; no; a hun¬ 
dred times no. If God so loved the world that 
He gave His only begotten Son, He certainly 
would never have created or allowed the existence 
of a devil. There is no one personal devil as 
distinguished from others. There are devils, but 
one is no more a devil than the other; only as 
one may have more ability granted him as a free 
moral agent, and that ability perverted and 
misguided which makes him a devil. Devils were 
not created by God, but through free moral 
agency man and beings of a higher state became 
devils—that is all there is to a personal devil. If 
there were a Satan whose existence was from 
eternity, and God, being infinite in power and 


143 


Signal Thoughts . 


godness, would not allow that existence to continue, 
as it could be annihilated and man’s freedom 
not destroyed. And God will do anything to 
save a soul, save that of destroying free moral 
agency. 

If Christ would have so chosen He could have 
become the biggest devil known. Wherever 
there is free moral agency there is possibility of 
sin; heaven is not exempt from the possibility, 
“and (1) the angels which kept not their first estate 
but left their own habitation.” 

“And (2) there was war in heaven: Michael and 
his angels fought against the dragon; and the 
dragon fought and his angels.” “And the great 
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the 
devil and Satan.” 

These passages imply and express original 
state as good. The angels left, not driven from 
their own habitation. The dragon and his angels 
fought,—not persecuted to open rebellion. Satans 
are satans through choice and not by creation; 
although in the human family Satanic propensities 
are transmitted by birth. “How (3) art thou fallen 
from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.” 
Satan came from heaven, not by creation, but by 
sin through design. Perversion is Satan. There 


(1) Jude 6. 

(2) Rev. 12, 7. 

(3) Isa. 14, 12. 



Is there a Personal Devil ? 149 

is no more an original devil expressed or implied 
in Scriptures than you and I when we sin, are 
original devils. 

There are passages of Scripture wherein the 
word devil appears to infer that the devil has 
dominion over man, but it is the sin that has the 
dominion, and man is the devil. The words “devil” 
and “ Satan” are but the expressions of the state 
of some finite mind. 

“For 1 2 John came neither eating nor drinking, 
and they say, He hath a devil.” The word devil 
in this case can not be a personality “en esse ,” 1 
for one cannot possess a personality in connection 
with his own. It was simply the supposed state 
of the disciple’s mind. The advocates of a per¬ 
sonal devil harbor much in the temptation of 
Christ. But Christ was tempted in all respects as 
we; and if you measure the fourth chapter of 
Matthew wherein Christ’s temptation is portrayed, 
you will find that humanity fully covers it—human 
experience has lived it all, and more, it yielded. 
What was Christ’s idea of a Satan ? That would 
settle the controversy. Some say it is not known 
just what Christ Himself did mean by devil or 
Satan. But He certainly expressed Himself when 
he said, ‘‘ Have {2) not I chosen you twelve and one 
of you is a devil? He spoke of Judas Iscariot.” 


(1) Matth. 11, 18. 

(2) John 6, 70.71. 



150 Signal Thoughts. 

That was Christs idea of a devil and that was the 
proper one. 

As to the serpent in the garden of Eden—it 
can not be positively said as to what the sin was; 
but one thing is sure it was a sin to which human¬ 
ity is heir, and every individual is subject to 
similar temptation, and more than likely yielded 
as did Adam and Eve; they are responsible for 
their own sin and its effects, and not for all of the 
sins of the world. 

As “Paradise Lost” is based upon the Scrip¬ 
tures, the Miltonic idea of Satan is the same as 
that which is generally understood to be the 
teachings of the bible. But Milton in his Samson 
Agonistes makes Samson say, ‘‘These evils I 
deserve and more, acknowledge them from God 
inflicted on me justly.” Dante in his Inferno 
pictures hell with its occupants but he never lays 
the charge to a personal devil, but to man’s own 
sin and folly. In Canto III are described those 
who lived indifferent to good or evil; in Canto IV 
those who lacked baptism,—merit not the bliss of 
paradise; Canto VI describes the circle in which 
the gluttons are punished for their folly, and so 
on. Canto after Canto reveals punishment and 
agony brought on by the transgressions of just 
laws; and nowhere is man’s torture attributed to 
a personal devil. 

In fact dualism is the growth, or rather the decay 


Is there a Personal Devil f 151 

of ages; it was not the primitive doctrine of evil. 
Humanity in its original state could better see 
that evil was not to be attributed to Satan, than 
sinful humanity can see that there is no Satan. 
If Christianity would cease its eternal howling 
about Satan, and teach personal duty with present 
results, and that man is the only devil in the 
sphere of mankind, it would be the gainer. There 
is a hell and there is no use speculating upon it— 
it is right here and the way to escape it is not by 
believing in a personal Satan, but by believing in 
God and full personal responsibility. Away with 
your original devil or a great spiritual influential 
devil that works through communion. 

Stand on your imagination and assert reason 
and you will believe in no devil. 


*5 2 


Signal Thoughts. 


LOVE. 


Love! there is nothing in the whole world like 
it; nothing so great, nothing so grand, nothing so 
wonderful and nothing so lovely. What is it? 
Words cannot express it, and definition cannot 
reach it. It is one of those somethings that needs 
no explanation or definition to explain or define 
it. It is its own and alone. It is not related or 
connected to anything save its own—love. If it 
were definable it might lose its strength, its 
beauty and its loveliness. We all know what it 
is; it is love. Without it the world would be a 
desert, and the universe a total blank. It was 
the last in creation and yet it prompted all crea¬ 
tion. God might, without the thought of love, 
have called the universe into existence, and laws 
of matter might even have acted in harmony 
without love. But what a cold world it would 
have been. Man might have been created and 
not have known love. But what a frigid man he 
would have been. 

Love is first and love is last; all things were 
made for it; it is the chief thought of God. With¬ 
out it there could have been no true greatness, 
nothing wonderful and nothing lovely. Love! 



Love . 


J 5 3 


do you want to know what it is? Do you want 
to know who has it? Your own soul is cased 
within it, and can speak it; you know the gentle 
touch of love. It is the climax of nature; it soars 
while others creep. The law of love is the 
foundation of all law. When the foundations of 
the earth were laid, Job was in the bosom of love. 
God never thought a thought that was not love. 
The first atom looked down through creation and 
spoke the word, love. In the beginning was love 
and love was with God, and God was love. The 
God of love must certainly be pleased to see His 
creatures love, and He thus made all things 
conducive to that love. It was through love for 
man that all things were made, even man himself. 
He is a child of love. Man is not a psychological 
wonder, not a product of a distempered dream, 
but a monument of love. God is ever loving, and 
man, poor creature—pity him; he loves at times 
only, and it will be eternal bliss when he will love 
continually. 

Deprive a soul of opportunities; rob it of talent; 
steal its morality, but do not take its love. 
Eternity in love is but a day. If a soul could 
continually love, it would ask no more. Love is 
enough; it is its own reward, and there is none 
higher. There is no state of mind like that of 
love; none so pleasing, none so smooth, none so 

agreeable, none more human, none more divine, 
11 


154 


Signal Thoughts . 


and none more hallowed. Love cannot explain 
itself; that is half its charm. Shakspeare says, 
“ There is beggary in the love that can be reck¬ 
oned.” It is the depth of divine sensation. 

Love dwells within the soul, but it acts outward. 
There is no love without an object; it is not a 
subjective agent. It seeks its own, but not its 
own love; it is ever giving, but never receiving. 
It loves martyrdom, but not honor for honors 
sake. Friendship is but the outer steps to the 
chamber of love. Egotism lives the center; love 
lives the circumference of universal humanity. 
Egotism deprives; love lends. Egotism slanders; 
love praises. Egotism wants a reward; love 
never asks for it. Egotism promises; love 
donates. Egotism threatens; love yields. Ego¬ 
tism is despotism; love is liberty. Egotism is 
anarchy; love is peace. Egotism remains at 
home; love goes abroad. Egotism is the guillo¬ 
tine; love is calvary. Egotism if needs be kills; 
love if needs be dies. There is no love in egotism, 
and no egotism in love. Man cannot love 
himself; God cannot love Himself; rather they are 
love. 

There is but one enemy to human love, and 
that is time. We would desire nothing else, if 
we could but always love. Where there is love 
there can be no sin. Love fills all space and 
never thereby loses its density. It is the basis 


Love . 


155 

of character, and there is no character without 
love. Nothing replenishes and revives an ex¬ 
hausted soul like love. It makes duty juvenile 
and the cross of life a living hallelujah. You 
cannot keep a record of the moments of love. 
They are too fleeting and yet too eternal. One 
grain of love will cure the blackest fit of melan¬ 
choly that ever over-shadowed a human soul. 
One thought of love will make all hell tremble, 
and one aspiration for love will make all heaven 
rejoice. Love conquers where might fails. 

No one realizes the power of love like the lover, 
and ninety-nine out of a hundred of those do not 
understand how they do experience it. Love is 
not only great, not only wonderful, but peculiar. 
It makes of the courtiers different persons; they 
look differently; they dress differently; they act 
differently; they talk differently; and they think 
•differently. Love has revolutionized their whole 
beings; it has virtually transformed their lives. 
They virtually love one another’s parents, not 
that they love them, but because they themselves 
are lovers, and they are seeking channels through 
which to pour their abundant love. They speak 
lovingly of the beauties of nature; they admire 
the decorations of one another’s houses, and even 
pet the house-dog, that they would otherwise 
kick—all to show the love they bear one another. 
Love sometimes makes fools of men, not that 


Signal Thoughts. 


156 

love is foolish, but it is often in excess of the* 
channel of reason through which it flows, and it 
is thereby twisted, distorted and dwarfed. 

Love is peculiar in its strength. One ounce of 
love will do more toward making man manly,, 
than a pound of the best culture. It makes homes, 
and there is no home where there is no love.. 
There is no baptism like the baptism of love. En¬ 
circle a soul by the fibers of love, and that souL 
has found the heights of heaven. 


i 


i 


Philosophical Courtship. 


15 7 


PHILOSOPHICAL COURTSHIP. 

PLATO AND EUNICE. 


Plato. I was thinking— 

Eunice. Well Plato that is nothing new for 
you. It appears to me you think a great deal and 
you ought not be surprised in finding yourself in 
*duty. 

P. I know it is every person’s duty to think 
and that thinking be properly directed. But I 
was thinking in a particular line, suggested to 
my mind, as we were talking, by two thoughtless 
Hovers that just passed. 

E. Well Plato, what did you think? 

p. I thought, when I saw those two pretty, 
blooming, careless, indifferent, inexperienced and 
thoughtless lovers, that marriage is a failure be¬ 
cause courtship is a failure. 

E. Well Plato, why is courtship a failure? 

P. You tell! 

E. I have my ideas about it, but you began the 
colloquy, and you can answer all the difficult 
questions; but if you think the failure is caused 
entirely by my sex, you are mistaken. 

P. No, it is a failure because the courtiers are 
.a failure. It is remarkable how lovers do their 



Signal Thoughts . 


158 

courting; they begin wrong—they start out withi 
love, and of course love ends in marriage, and: 
you know about the proverb, “ Love is blind.” 
Courtship ought to be started and conducted on. 
the principle of investigation; reason ought to- 
be first on the field and make the survey, and if 
all is right let love reign, and if reason is not 
satisfied don’t allow love to come in, as it wilL 
sooner or later meet its death. 

E. Plato, that is cold-heartedness. 

P. No, that is common-sense,—the same kind 1 
that men use in buying farms and trading horses, 
and it would be well if more were used in court¬ 
ship. If a man gets beaten in a horse trade, he 
can trade again and get even, but if he gets 
beaten in marriage it is for life. Every courtier 
ought to have every faculty awake. Let eachi 
study the other’s ability and disposition; investi¬ 
gate and if need be make inquiry; have at least 
a faint idea as to what you are doing and whom 
you are going to marry. 

E. Plato, you talk as though love were an 
easy thing to control. Don’t you know it is. 
stronger than legions and mightier than armies,, 
and when love once takes possession of a soul: 
there is nothing in reason or report that can ex¬ 
pel it? You may be a philosopher and know 
much about philosophy and reason, but you don’t 
appear to know anything of the power of love or 


Philosophical Courtship. 159 

the pangs of a broken heart,—if you think rea¬ 
son is stronger than love. 

P. “ Power of love, and pangs of a broken 
heart!” 

E. Yes! Power of love and pangs of a 
broken heart. 

P. You must at some time have been a victim, 
Eunice? 

E. No! I never was, but I might have been, 
and you, “ Plato,” might have been, and even in 
your great wisdom may yet be a poor subject in 
the arms of deception. 

P. What you say is all truth, but if what you 
say should happen, I hope I can lay the charge 
to reason and say it failed in its best effort and 
not condemn myself for not exercising reason 
when I ought, and thus have a double sin of 
which to repent. 

E. Well, Plato, you may have reason, but I 
thank Heaven that I am susceptible of love. I 
would rather, if I were married, have a man of 
love and no marked reason than one all reason 
and no love. 

P. I have thought somewhat. I am human, 
and I think I know something of the power of 
love—if I don’t of the “pangs” of a broken 
heart—that which we term love is nothing but 
school boy and school girl affection. When I 
say love, I mean love, that affection which loves, 


160 Signal Thoughts. 

and that love which has a basis that will last 
throughout eternity—and not only for twenty-four 
hours. 

E. You think that women are fickle, don’t 
you? 

P. No, I don’t. I know it, and I know that 
men are also. 

E. You are honest for once Plato. 

P. Reason is always honest. It is that which 
you call love that is dishonest, disloyal, treacher¬ 
ous—fraudulent and a forger. 

E. Why, Plato! You would not call lovers 
dishonest, disloyal, treacherous—frauds and for¬ 
gers, would you? 

P. I simply call them by their right name, 
and I have no right to call them anything else. 
I tell you courtship is often a failure because of 
the deceit practiced by the parties. The business 
man is sent to penitentiary because of his deceit 
and fraud, whereas your lover goes unpunished 
and with head erect lives like a lord in society. 
And more than likely he or she has practiced 
more fraud than your prisoner. 

E. Do you mean to say that lovers are false 
to one another? 

P. Falser than—Eunice, I beg your pardon for 
my next statement, but I believe it and what I 
believe I am not ashamed to say—if not falser 
they are as false as hell. 


Philosophical Courtship. 161 

E. Plato, I am not afraid to say what I be¬ 
lieve—even in the presence of your high reason. 

P. That is all right. 

E. I think you look too much to the dark 
side; I believe there is more innocence than you 
see. 

P. Why of course there is innocence, you 
can’t have fraud without innocence. 

E. Well, Plato, one thing is sure— 

P. What is that, Eunice? 

E. If ever you were a party to courtship, it 
would be a mighty cold one. 

P. But it would be a mighty real one. I might 
be deceived, but I would not be the deceiver. 
And I would, at least I hope I would, have enough 
common-sense, if I saw deceit and fraud running 
wild, to pull up stakes and let some other fellow 
have the job. 

E. Do you know what Shakespeare once said ? 

P. I know some things Shakespeare said, but 
I don’t know what you refer to. 

E. He said “It is easier to teach twenty what 
were good to do than to be one of the twenty to 
follow mine own teaching.” 

P. That is true, Eunice; many in their own 
teaching fail, but more without teaching. 

E. Do you recall what Milton says? 

P. I suppose you refer to Samson Agonistis? 

E. Yes, he said, “with blandish’d parlies, 


162 Signal Thoughts . 

feminine assaults, tongued batteries, etc., etc., I 
yielded.” 

P. Yes—and little farther on he says, “Who 
with a grain of manhood well resolved might 
easily have shook off all her snares.” 

E. But that was too late, like a great many 
other cases. 

P. But there are a great many cases for which 
it is not too late, and it is for the grain of resolu¬ 
tion that I believe in fostering. 

E. Well, Plato, I believe in individuality— 

P. I am glad to hear it, for that is more than 
some women have. 

E. You don’t believe in woman’s having indi¬ 
viduality, do you? 

P. I certainly do, and it is a mighty poor wo¬ 
man that has no individuality. I wouldn’t want 
her, and there are some kinds of individualities 
that I would not want either. 

E. Here, too, Plato, I would not want a crank,, 
would you? 

P. That depends upon what kind of a crank 
it is; if it is a good crank, why all right. 

E. Well, Plato, I don’t see as much deception 
in courtship as you think you do. 

P. Deception from beginning to end, the best, 
phase of everything is presented, and the bad 
concealed. Their first meeting, or introduction, 
is under favorable circumstances for an exhibition 


Philosophical Courtship . 163, 

of fraud, and in what they call love, they begin 
to practice at once deceit. They, of course, are 
dressed in their best, because the occasion de¬ 
manded it—and to hear them tell one another 
their story, you would think they had forgotten 
to toilet up at all. The very first time they meet 
they lie to one another about their clothes—and 
then he takes her home, and oh! he acts so nice 
and courteous. Why he, like Sir Walter Raleigh 
of old, would take off his cloak—yes he would, 
and to be a little better he would kiss it before 
throwing it down for her to step upon. Oh! he 
would not smoke for the world—when he acci¬ 
dentally left all his cigars at home. Why! Jim, 
since he has turned lover acts so differently that 
his sisters nor his mother would not know him, 
but when he returns home it is the same Jim as. 
before. 

E. And how does she act? 

P. Why! she had a sort of an inspiration 
that Jim would take her home. And she sends, 
her little sister home to tell her mother that Jim 
will be there, and everything must be better than 
the best. 

E. That is smartness, Plato? 

P. That is fraud—she takes Jim into the par¬ 
lor, and, of course, she tells him that she left in 
a hurry and things are not as they generally are. 
—that mother has been unable to work—and 


164 


Signal Thoughts. 


everything looks bad. When in fact everything 
is about one hundred per cent, better than usual. 
But, of course, Jim don’t know it, and the old 
woman and the old gent will make it a solemn 
duty to see to it that Jim never will—until it is 
too late. And oh! she is so neat! dirt would scare 
her to death, and, of course, Jim is tremendous¬ 
ly in love, and he could not see a grease spot if 
he would step on it and slip and fall. He would 
think it was caused by the attraction of love— 
that would be Jim’s philosophy of the situation. 
E. Well, Plato. 

P. If a man doctors up an old horse for sale 
or trading purposes, the neighbors cry cheat— 
fraud. But Jim and Jane doctor everything and 
pass it on one another as sound. 

E. That is love working for its object. 

P. It seems to me it must be a mighty fine 
object that works that way. 

E. Have you related all the deceptions— 
Plato? 

P. No! Jim tells how rich his father is, and 
Jane recounts her father’s wealth, and they both 
think they are marrying rich—until they attempt 
to take a wedding tour and then find out there is 
not enough wealth in both families to give them 
an excursion on a street car. 

E. Well, Plato, you see a great many things, 
and I am inclined to think you are about right, 


Philosophical Courtship . 165 

though I confess I never before looked at it in 
that light. But what would you do about it? 

P. I would first look into those things—take 
less for granted and more on inspection. I would 
not care so much about the wealth, but I would 
want to know if there was any lying about it or 
not. I would catch Jane in the kitchen, if she 
ever is there, if I had to come the sneak on her. 
I would want to see her once, at least, without 
her artificiality, in order to know how she really 
did look. I would want to have somewhat of an 
idea what I was getting before I made a bargain. 

E. But Plato, would you be willing to give 
the other party as much knowledge of yourself 
as you expect to receive? You have been talk¬ 
ing much and I presume it is all wisdom as it 
comes from Plato, but would you uncover your 
defects and infirmities? Would you confess your 
errors and sins? Would you lay bare your 
bosom? Would you reveal the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth? Answer, Plato. 

P. Eunice, you speak rather indignantly, but 
I admire you for it. I think you have misunder¬ 
stood me. I have not advocated confession but 
simply that the parties ought to be real—be true 
to themselves and to one another. 

E. But, Plato, you have evaded my questions, 
and stated a sweeping generality. You might be 
real to yourself. You might not attempt to de- 


Signal Thoughts . 


166 

ceive the other partv; and yet there could be 
something that no one save yourself could know, 
and no one ask you—would you reveal such a 
secret? 

P. If the concealment of a fact, which if re¬ 
vealed, could in any wise affect future relation¬ 
ship, I certainly would consider it my duty to 
make it known. 

E. Do you think you would be equal to your 
duty? 

P. I do. 

E. Have you ever failed in duty? 

P. I have. 

E. Might you not fail in this one? 

P. I might, but I would not purpose it, and 
that is just what I have been contending, that 
parties to courtship labor to fail to a high duty. 

E. Then, Plato, you look upon courtship as a 
high duty? 

P. I surely do. I know none higher save duty 
to God, and certainly none more seriously affect¬ 
ed by a mistake. It is a place where deception 
comes back like a midnight demon to condemn 
the deceiver in a hundred fold ratio. 

E. By your reference to cheat and fraud, you 
have made me think. Have you mentioned all 
the deceptions practiced in courtship, Plato? 

P. No, that would be imposing on your good- 


Philosophical Courtship. 167 

will. I have simply referred to a few, suggested 
as I stated by that couple that just passed. 

E. When you started to speak on the subject 
of courtship, I thought you were simply doing it 
to have an opportunity to criticise and speak sar¬ 
castically of woman and her weakness. I thought 
you were going to argue down woman and up¬ 
hold man; but now I believe you are as fair with 
one as you are with the other, and I know, Plato, 
I said things I would not have said, and some I 
probably ought not, but I assure you—I now beg 
your pardon. 

P. You said nothing but that was perfectly 
right. You did not hurt my feelings in the least, 
for I assure you I had no object save that of repre¬ 
senting the truth as I saw it, and I cared not how 
you or any one else received it. It was reason 
that prompted my statements, and if my reason¬ 
ing or thought is not right, you are at perfect 
liberty to reject or correct it. I don’t want any 
one to believe my thoughts just because I say so. 
I like to see people think for themselves—if they 
have any brains, and most people have, and often 
more than they think, if they would just get at it 
and exercise them. Mind is like muscle, in order 
to become strong and sturdy it must have exer¬ 
cise. You women are not half as fickle as you 
might be, nor are you half as strong as you might 
be. 


Signal Thoughts . 


168 


E. Well, Plato, you are determined to 
strike at woman’s weakness. I admit that some 
women are weak, and I can also prove that some 
men are. 

P. Very well, let us not cavil about an old 
truth that both of us know,—you asked me a 
short time since, if I had given all the deceptions 
practiced in courtship. You know we spoke how 
father was represented as having wealth—farms, 
big barns, herds of cattle and scores of hogs; 
or else a great store, or money in banks,—a bank 
holder and what not. And you know after mar¬ 
riage, farms as a reality dwindled into one little 
town lot in some small village, big barns into lit¬ 
tle sheds, herds of cattle to one calf, and scores 
of hogs to a shoat that died for fathers uncle, 
and great stores into country post offices, and 
bank certificates into sheriffs’ sales. The first 
was lovely courtship and the second fighting 
matrimony; the first is all right for fiction, but 
when you go to practice it—it doesn’t wear. 

E. Why doesn’t it wear? 

P. Why, there is too much of a change. 
Courtship and marriage ought not to be separa¬ 
ted by a mighty declivity of reality and hope. 
There is no grandeur in waking up on the matri¬ 
monial altar to find out that courtship has been a 
blank and heinous lie. If both had been conceal¬ 
ing and lying, they might shake hands and for- 


Philosophical Courtship . 169 

get the past; but generally one party does the 
evil work, and you might just as well forget self, 
as to attempt to forget the fraud once practiced 
on you when every day life is bearing the fruits, 
of fraud. 

E. O Plato, you are certainly looking too 
much to the dark side; there are some cases, but 
not all, as you appear to think. You must have 
been a victim at some time, and can’t survive it. 

P. I guess not, Eunice. 

E. I would like to ask you a question, Plato. 
P. Ask it. 

E. Were you ever, and are you now married?" 

P. That is two questions, but I will answer 
them. I never was married and consequently 
could not be married now. The fun of it is, the 
other fellows were the victims, and I looked on 
and watched the sacrifice. And the same with 
you,—the other girls have been deceived by ras¬ 
cals, and you are clear and ought to thank your 
stars for it. 

E. Of course, Plato,' I have had the privilege 
to talk with you but a few times. This conversa¬ 
tion is becoming very entertaining and profitable 
to me, and you, being a man of much wisdom, li 
will take the liberty from time to time in asking; 
a few questions—if you please. 

P. Very well. 

E. I should judge from your conversation and 
12 


i ;o 


Signal Thoughts . 


deportment, that you are one of those great 
philosophers that don’t believe in marriage and 
look upon love simply as feminine weakness. 

P. I do not believe in mismarriage, but I do 
in successful marriage. I do believe in love but 
not in child’s play. 

E. Well, what do you mean by mismarriage? 

P. I could go on for hours expostulating on 
that question, but I will sum it down toafew words 
—I don’t believe in yoking heaven and hell to¬ 
gether—for a very long time at least. 

E. Have you now said all about deception in 
courtship? 

P. No—deceptions—well. 

E. Plato, before I forget it, let me ask you a 
question. 

P. All right. 

E. Now, supposing, a person in courtship 
was honest, and meant everything all right, and 
then after marriage learnt by experience that 
he or she was deceived, Avhat would you do, 
Plato? 

P. Why, I would stand the storm like a man, 
and when the blast became a continual hurricane 
and cyclone combined and twisted—why I think 
I would emigrate for protection to some court¬ 
house. Ido not believe because one was a fool once, 
and deceived, that he is under any obligation to 
remain a fool and be tortured the rest of his life. 


Philosophical Courtship . 171 

E. That is true, Plato, but let me tell you, the 
party that is deceived is the sincere one, and I 
don’t believe it is such an easy matter to untie 
matrimonial knots. 

P. Those are words of wisdom, Eunice. 

E. Women know something, Plato, if they are 
not such great philosophers. 

P. I have never questioned woman’s capabil¬ 
ities. 

E. Now let us go back to deceptions. 

P. It is amusing to see lovers try to blind one 
another as to facts. Pretend they are educated 
and cultured—and if ever the mind made a flat 
“fizzle” of anything, it is pretending to be wise. 
They use big words not in any dictionary. 
You can have a little money and dress up and 
pretend you are rich, and have some success at it, 
but when you assume mind development you 
appear worse than ridiculous. I tell you culture 
is too great a thing to be imitated—soul grandeur 
is too sublime to be assumed; in order to be wise 
you must become wise. 

E. Those are great truths, Plato, great thought 
you have just uttered, but even I, a woman in 
weakness, can understand them, and what is more 
vital can realize that they are true. 

P. That is no surprise to me. The greatest 
truths when comprehended appear the simplest 
because they are great enough to cast their own 


7 2 


Signal Thoughts . 


light. And it does not take much of a mind to 
apprehend what another person discovers. It is 
the getting it to say, where the rub comes in. 

E. I understand you; you think the men 
originate everything and the women copy. 

P. I said nothing like it. I simply stated a 
philosophical truth, as I see it, and if I am not 
right, Eunice, you are at liberty to give your 
opinion. 

E. I admit the correctness of your philosophy, 
but I am not particularly stuck on the way you 
say it. It appears to me there are insinuations 
back of it. But, Plato, I beg your pardon for 
using a slang phrase, but I felt like saying some¬ 
thing and I used the phrase because it is expres¬ 
sive, and I assure you there was no anger 
intended, but an opinion ventured. 

P. Oh, I don’t know as I insinuated anything, 
but if you thought I did, why I admire you for 
having the grit to honestly and, without anger, 
state that you believe I had. 

E. Well, Plato, I want to say right here, 
though it may not be true as to you great philos¬ 
ophers, but nevertheless there are a score of weak 
men on your side of the question, who verily 
believe that they are better and stronger than the 
women simply because they are men and we 
women. And I do not believe, Plato, you would 
side in with such philosophy, would you? 


Philosophical Courtship. 173 

P. One thing is sure, God created both, and 
the Bible says He has no respect for persons. I 
am satisfied it is about all right, Eunice. 

E. Then I understand you, that man in his 
manhood is no greater than woman in her woman¬ 
hood. 

P. Certainly that is true, but when you spoke 
of “no anger” it made me think. 

E. Let us hear it. 

P. In courtship they try, and too often succeed, 
in cheating one another as to disposition. They 
make one another believe that they have just a 
lovely disposition. They would not act mad, if 
they were so confounded hot they did not know 
what to do, and if anger did show itself, and the 
other party made accusation, the first party would 
lie and swear it was not so. They have no more 
idea as to one another’s natural disposition than 
they have of a cyclone in heaven. Jim in court¬ 
ship is too nice and Jane too lovely to do any¬ 
thing wrong. If father tells Jane that Jim is a 
rascal, she puts it down as a lie when she ought 
at least to calendar it for investigation. If mother 
tells Jim that Jane has a temper that Satan fears, 
Jim says it is not so, it is lovely. In fact, in 
courtship everything is taken for granted where 
everything ought to be known. 

E. What would you do in regard to disposi¬ 
tion ? 


174 Signal Thoughts* 

P. I would confess I was at wits end if I could 
not say something that would stir up disposition. 
And if I could not do that I would appoint my¬ 
self as a committee of one on investigation. If 
one thinks he is marrying an angelic disposition, 
and wakes up on matrimonial morn, to find it 
Satanic, I tell you the discovery does not produce 
any very pleasing sensation. 

E. Supposing you turn that around and sub¬ 
stitute she for he, how is it then ? 

P. No less disagreeable, I assure you. 

E. Plato, I must confess that you are very 
fair in your statements. 

P. Reason cannot be otherwise, and I certainly 
in all things try to be reasonable. 

E. Then you try to make reason your crown¬ 
ing virtue? 

P. Virtue must follow reason. If I follow 
reason I am satisfied virtue is with it, but I might 
be virtuous in the sense of being sincere and yet 
be very unreasonable. Were I asked, what is the 
first thing to a great life, I would answer, reason;, 
if what next, I would say reason, and so on. 

E. Plato, what would reason be without love ? 

I think perfect love is the greatest thing in the 
universe. 

P. Reason without love would still be reason,, 
but love without reason is like superstition— 
blind. 


Philosophical Courtship . 175 

E. You don’t have much to say for love 
then ? 

P. True, without love this world would be 
cold, but love without reason is not a healthy 
love. 

E. I suppose, Plato, you would stand up and 
in your pride say, I reason, but you would 
not say I love; you would think that was weak¬ 
ness. 

P. I tell you the truth, I don’t think, (yes I 
know it,) I have never told any person that I 
loved him or her, and I do not think I ever said 
I love God. 

E. Well, Plato, I don’t think that is anything- 
of which to be proud. I don’t think any statement 
like that will call forth much love, but truly, Plato, 
it deserves severe criticism; and one day you may 
feel the power of love, and find yourself begging 
at the feet of some pretty maid whose love you 
seek. 

P. And I suppose you, to get even, would like 
to see her refuse. 

E. Well, I hope you would get a baptism of 
something that would warm up that cold reason 
of yours, and then you would be a greater man 
than you now are—although you are now a truly 
great man and a great philosopher. 

P. I don’t like to hear people say, I love you. 
I fail to have the confidence in them I had before. 


176 


Signal Thoughts . 


I don’t like to hear church-members continually 
and ever telling how they love God. In fact, I 
sometimes doubt their Christianity, and when I 
hear of their hypocricy I am not much surprised. 

E. Plato, you are peculiarly great, and I 
sometimes think you are a very cruel man. 

P. What makes you think me cruel? You 
have never seen me deal unjustly or cruel with 
any man or woman, Eunice. 

E. That is true, but when a man has said that 
he has never spoken the word love to any human 
being, nor to God, it sounds cruel to one that was 
taught, like I, from infancy to love, and that God 
Is a God of love. I confess now to God that I 
love Him and I have the same confession for 
human beings. Plato, of course your reason is 
much above me; your thoughts are higher than 
mine; you know and see truths that I cannot; 
you have experienced life that I never have, and 
probably never can, but O Plato! if you have 
not had the touch of divine love in your heart, 
you know not what life is. If a sisters tender 
love; if a mother’s dying love; if a lover’s hope¬ 
ful love has never met reciprocation in your heart, 
I hope and trust that you will one day speak the 
word love, and then I believe you would have a 
soul that has no equal on earth. Plato, this 
grieves me that one so true to reason, so noble, 
so active, so honorable, and above all so abund- 


Philosophical Courtship . 


177 


antly possessed with capabilities of mind, should 
not be possessed with love. I had hoped that 
even I might be the recipient of your love, but if 
you have no love as you yourself confess, I trust 
by God’s grace to forget you as soon as you are 
out of my sight. I at first thought it was an 
honor to meet one so cultured and possessed of 
such high reason, but now I wish I had never 
heard the name—Plato. I wish I could forever 
erase it from the book of memory, or at least 
remember it only as a lamb remembers the wolf 
—that of a deadly enemy. But, Plato, I confess 
that you have taught me many great truths. I 
see them now, probably as plain as you do, and 
what I have just said I said hastily and might one 
day desire to unsay it; and I will now tell you 
some things, and not like a moral coward relate 
them behind your back. I at one time thought 
you were a great philosopher, and I yet believe 
it. I at one time thought you were a great man, 
and I yet believe it. And I at one time thought 
that you in your greatness could love, but ac¬ 
cording to your own words, I don’t know as you 
can. 

P. Well, Eunice, let us reason. 

E. It appears that you do not care for anything 
but reason. Don’t you ever have a desire to 
become rich? 

P. Wealth! I don’t care for riches; it requires 


i7» 


Signal Thoughts. 


drudgery to become rich, and then when you 
have it, it is simply something to leave when you 
die. Of course it is well to be financially inde¬ 
pendent, and it is every man’s duty'to be so, but 
when it comes right down to spending a whole 
life in acquiring riches, I am not in it. I believe 
in development of mind—not the pocket book; in 
possessing thought—not money. Soul activity 
and grandeur survive the death-bed, and thoughts 
flash through the grave like meteors through the 
sky in midnight darkness. Give me exalted and 
sublime ideas and you may have the riches of the 
Vanderbilts and Rothchilds. I hate to see a 
beggar and I despise a miser. 

E. I did not suppose a man of your breadth 
of intellect would despise any man—but of course 
if you can’t love, I suppose you can hate. 

P. I meant I despise the miser’s life and acts 
and not the miser himself. I have no more 
against the miser than I have against you, but 
the grander the life and the nobler the act of a 
person, the more to be admired is that person. 

E. Then you mean to say you think as much 
of a miser as you do of me or any other person 
attempting to live a noble life? 

P. I mean to say, that if you were a miser, I 
could think no more of you than I do of any other 
miser; and if I were a miser I could not reasona¬ 
bly ask any more of you. It is not that a person 


Philosophical Courtship . 179 

is, but what a person is, that makes the man or 
woman. 

E. Yes— 

P. But what I was going to say is this,—some 
people criticise and censure too much; condemn 
faults in others when they themselves possess the 
same. We would be less subject to just criticism 
and be more charitable to others, if we would 
study and criticise ourselves more and others less. 
It is natural to get angry at being called a fool, 
but I have called myself a fool oftener than the 
world ever has or can, and I ought not to get mad 
when the world calls me a fool; when I long 
since, in my secret thoughts, have given the same 
condemnation. 

E. I see, Plato, that you are picking up some¬ 
thing that I said a long time ago. But did not I 
confess that I probably did wrong, and have I 
shown a natural disposition to be a critic? 

P. “ Natural disposition,” that makes me 
think. A womans expression undoubtedly would 
be, you have acted “lovely,” but I will say, 
Eunice, that you in your remarks have been quite 
calm, fair and judicious, but, of course, I think 
you could improve some. 

E. We would be very little creatures if there 
were no room for improvement. And I have 
seen great philosophers that I thought had room 
for improvement. 


180 Signal Thoughts, 

P. You are getting to be quite a philosopher, 
but I suppose it is due to your surroundings? 

E. Yes. 

P. But as you have turned philosopher, let us 
reason some more. 

E. Well, I want to ask you a question. It is 
one upon which I have thought much,—and with 
Christian sincerity. I at one time thought I un¬ 
derstood it, but the more I think of it on the 
positive line, I must confess, the more I doubt it. 
It is the old question of Nicodemus,—How can 
a man be born again? 

P. I am always pleased to learn that a person 
has been thinking, and especially when it is sin¬ 
cere thinking. Thought is the only thing that will 
develop mind. 

E. But, Plato, answer my question. 

P. I would not for the world shatter your 
faith, but as you in sincerity have asked a ques¬ 
tion, I will answer it in the same spirit. In one 
sense it is true, but technically it is not. Man 
cannot be born again; the philosophical term 
would be ‘‘changed.” Ye must be changed, 
changed by the Spirit; it is a birth of new life but 
personality is the same'. 

E. I now understand it, Plato, and you have 
not weakened my faith but strengthened it. But 
1 want to ask you another question. Do you be- 


Philosophical Courtship . 181 

lieve that there is a heaven and a hell, and if so, 
where are they located? 

P. No! I don’t believe anything about them. 
I know, heaven and hell are not questions of loca¬ 
tion, but of state. And certainly there is such a 
state of mind that can properly be termed heaven 
or hell, and quite likely you and I have experi¬ 
enced something of their nature, and may God 
deliver us from becoming established in such a 
state of mind. 

E. So, it makes no difference where heaven 
is, just so it is heaven. 

P. That is about it. 

E. Plato, a short time ago you spoke as 
though my diposition was not what it might be, 
which I confess is true, but do you pretend that 
you have a perfect disposition? 

P. No! but I am one of those poor sinners 
that hate a sour disposition and am attempting to 
regulate my own. 

E. Plato, you are a different man from what 
I once thought you were. You are more humble 
than I supposed you ever would be. 

P. Great men are always different from what 
you think them to be—that is they are greater. 
Did you not know that Eunice? 

E. Are they not sometimes smaller than one 
thinks them to be? 


182 


Signal Thoughts . 

P. But those that are smaller than you think 
them to be, are not great men. 

E. Well, Plato, you have a faculty of getting 
around most anything. 

P. No; you are mistaken. I can’t get around a 
mistake and do it with candor and showing. 

E. I think you could if you wanted to, but, 
Plato, I am glad you do not desire it. I admire 
your candor and reason. 

P. I never yet have seen a lady admire me 
that I thought had enough soul to satisfy my 
ideal. 

E. I did not say I admire you. It was your 
candor and reason that called forth my admira¬ 
tion. 

P. I did not say you did, I simply stated a 
fact. 

E. Plato, are you a big enough fool to suppose 
that God ever make a woman to fit your ideal? 

P. No! Eunice, no. He has made it possi¬ 
ble, but women have failed so miserably that they 
have come far short of it. 

E. How about men? 

P. Why! I have known of women com¬ 
mitting suicide because they could not win a cer¬ 
tain man, and they must surely have thought he 
was ideal. 

E. You may outwit and reason above women, 
but Plato, women have souls. 


Philosoph ical Courisk ip. 133 

P. Yes, and great souls. 

E. You have been talking much about great¬ 
ness, now let us look for goodness. I believe 
more children have been brought to the foot 
of Calvary by mother’s virtue and tears than by 
father’s morality and reason. Mothers are at 
prayer-meeting praying for the kingdom of 
heaven, while fathers are in the saloons and 
gambling dens working the extension of the 
realms of unrighteousness. Go into our jails and 
penitentiaries,Plato; whom do you find there; your 
sex or mine? Who commits the great crimes of 
this land, Plato; men or women? Who sowed 
the seeds of anarchy, socialism and communism, 
Plato; your sex or mine? Who was the leader 
in the war of secession, Plato? A man or a wo¬ 
man? Who are the infidels and unbelievers, 
Plato? Your sex or mine? It may be that you 
have the side of greatness, but I maintain that I 
have the side of goodness. 

P. Why not have man’s greatness take on 
woman’s goodness, and woman’s goodness man’s 
greatness, and thereby have somewhat of a per¬ 
fect man and a perfect woman? 

E. Is not what I said true, Plato? 

P. So true that it is not necessary for me to 
say that it is true. It is with pleasure that I con¬ 
cede woman her goodness, but it appears it is 
with reluctance you admit man his greatness. I 


184 


Signal Thoughts . 


attempt to look at things as they are and not as 
prejudice dictates. 

E. I believe women are over-shadowed by 
the presence of great men like you, but if they 
will throw out their little light of goodness, it 
will ascend as high as your greatness. I have 
heard too many great men attribute all their 
greatness to their mothers to believe that women 
are not great. 

P. Don’t you think, Eunice, that it is some¬ 
times said simply for the effect? 

E. No, I don’t. Did you ever think of the 
fact, Plato, that there was not a man in the whole 
world fit to be the father of Christ, whereas God 
easily found a woman good and great enough to 
be the mother of Christ? 

P. Did you ever figure out the number of 
apostles and disciples, and then see how many 
were men and how many were women? And 
why it was so? 

E. No, I never thought of it in that way. 

P. Well, I will tell you. Revelation is simply 
revealing or relating something for the purpose 
of having it circulated just as it was first told, 
and a woman, to save her soul, can’t tell a thing, 
just as she heard it. 

E. That is all right for a story, but it don’t go 
far toward answering the question of Christ’s 
mother. 


Philosophical Courtship . 185 

P. Well that is easy enough. Of course, God 
created woman and he had to give her something 
to dote on. 

E. Plato, do you know if the soul is immor¬ 
tal, that is, does it survive that dissolution of 
mind and body, we call death? 

P. I don’t know, Eunice, if the soul is immortal. 

E. I am surprised that you make answer thus. 
I supposed you would say “Soul is immortal.” 

P. I generally know pretty nearly what I say 
and I mean to say I don’t know if the soul sur¬ 
vives death or not. 

E. Don’t you believe in the inspiration of the 
Bible, Plato? 

P. For the sake of the argument I will say I 
do. 

E. The Bible teaches the immortality of the 
soul, and then do we not know that the soul is 
immortal? 

P. You reason wrong, Eunice, you asked me 
if I believed in the inspiration of the Bible and 
not if I knew; you started with belief as one of 
your premises, and conclusions cannot rise above 
their premises. But I will tell you plainly I cer¬ 
tainly believe the soul is immortal, and see abund¬ 
ant reasons for so believing, but when it comes 
to a dead certainty, I don’t know, and that is 
what you asked. You see now that women are 

not as great reasoners as they might be. 

13 


Signal Thoughts. 


186 

E. Ought not greatness make a man's heart 
warm instead of cold? 

P. True greatness will. 

E. What have you, Plato, greatness or true 
greatness? 

P. I have simplicity. 

E. And ought not simplicity create love? 

P. I think so. 

E. I fail to see it. 

1 P. That might be one of woman’s failures? 

E. Plato, you have the wit to joke, but you 
make life too serious. You look too much to the 
dark side of everything, too much inclined to 
melancholy. You ought to have someone to show 
up the bright side and thus make life more agree¬ 
able to yourself and more profitable to the other. 

P. There is a depth and sublimity in melan¬ 
choly that none know save its victims. 

E. You don’t mean to say you love melancholy. 

P. No! But sometimes the flood of itsgrand 
thoughts becomes avenues of light to the soul, 
and open up the portals of ‘all truth’—that is 
what I admire. 

E. But, Plato, you think too much; you may 
enjoy thought but you can’t enjoy life. 

P. He who lives ten years in thought lives 
longer than he who lives thirty years without it. 
It is not how old one is when he dies, but how 
much life. 


Philosophical Courtship . igy 

E. Well, Plato, I see that you are bound to 
be a philosopher; live alone and I suppose die 
alone. You appear to see no creature on earth 
that you love as you do your philosophy. 

P. The smallest creature is greater than the 
greatest philosophy, because it is possible for the 
creature to produce the philosophy. 

E. You see you turn everything into philoso¬ 
phy. Philosophy is good, but when everything is 
philosophy it becomes dry. 

P. Yes, but it is always the same—not like 
courtship saturated with love—dry up and blow 
away. Philosophy never does that. 

E. True love never changes and never dies— 
it lives, it lives, but sometimes it suffers because 
philosophy lives where love ought. Plato, all 
cannot be philosophers. 

P. But all can make an effort, and the next 
best to a great man is a man attempting to be 
great. Eunice, you cannot argue me away from 
greatness—reason is its own reasoner, and phil¬ 
osophy its own pleader. I care not for the polit¬ 
ical honor of the world. I want to be nothing less 
than a great philosopher. I thank God I am a 
man and not a woman. 

E. Plato, I thank God I am a woman and not 
a man. 

P. That is right, I believe it, and well it is so. 
Small is the man that would desire to be a woman, 


Signal Thoughts. 


188 

and little is the woman that would desire to be a 
man. I guess God knew what He was doing 
when he created Adam, and I guess He knew 
about what He was doing when He created 
Eve. 

Sometimes it appears that you are prejudiced: 
against woman, and then again you appear to> 
be perfectly fair. I don’t exactly know how to 
take you. 

P. Take me as I am, I don’t mean to deceive 
any one. 

E. Plato, I thought philosophy would produce 
love. 

P. No, philosophy cannot produce love; but 
it can and does open up the flood gates, and let 
in torrents of infinite love. God is the God of 
love; and philosophy rolls back the debris of 
ignorance, and lets love flow pure from its 
found. 

E. 1 like to hear you philosophize, but I am 
simply amazed to learn that you do not love or 
cannot believe in it. 

P. I do— 

E. Love? . 

P. I did not say so, nor were I about to. 

E. Plato, I don’t believe God ever made a 
human being but what was capable of loving. 

P. Eunice, God never made a human being 
but what at some time or other did love. 


Philosophical Courtship . 189 

E. Well— 

P. But what does a drop of love amount to if 
it be followed by a cyclone of wrath and hatred? 
What does a word of kindness signify when there 
is a dirty mean life black as hell back of it? Let 
not yourself be betrayed by a kiss. 

E. Plato, I receive nothing but philosophy 
from you. 

P. Could you ask more? 

E. I mean to give more; but of course you do 
not see it, as you say philosophy has no equal. 

P. Well— 

E. But Plato, I want you to understand that 
you have not broken a poor girl’s heart—one who 
will die because you did not love her. But re¬ 
member, when you have forgotten her, that she 
still loves and that she loves reason and philoso¬ 
phy, and what is greater she can and does love 
human beings. 

P. You accused me of a restless life. But it 
appears to me you are growing sympathetic and 
nervous. 

E. I have decided to become a missionary 
and go to the heathen land. 

P. Is there anything that can induce you to 
remain? 

E. Nothing—nor any one. 

P. You are bent on going and go you will. 
That is the woman of it, but that is right. But 


190 


Signal Thoughts. 

Eunice, we have not discussed the question of 
bachelors and maids, and I think we ought to for 
the philosophy of it. 

E. Well! what is the philosophy of a man be¬ 
ing a bachelor? 

P. Some men are bachelors because their 
fathers ought to have always been bachelors, and 
thus they are attempting to atone for their fathers, 
sin. 

E. What of the rest? 

P. They are bachelors through choice. 

E. I think very few men are bachelors through- 
choice. 

P. It is all by choice. Either they choose, or 
some one else chooses to leave them bachelors. 

E. Well, that is true. 

P. The same philosophy will apply to old: 
maids. 

E. What is your reason for saying old maids, 
and not old bachelors? 

P. A bachelor will give his exact age, but an 
old maid will not. And it is the custom with horse 
dealers, when an animal gets so old you can’t tell 
how old it is, to call it old. 

E. That is man’s view of the question, and I 
assure you, Plato, woman’s view is the same, only 
turned around. 

P. We will not quarrel. There are very few 
bachelors and maids in this world. 


Philosophical Courtship . 191 

E. Well what about the few? 

P. Some are happy and I suppose some un¬ 
happy. 

E. You are a philosopher. What ought man’s 
state to be—bachelor or married? 

P. Just as reason dictates. 

E. Plato, how long ought courtship last? 
What is your philosophical opinion? 

P. Certainly long enough for the parties to 
know each other, and not guess at it. A man is 
happier a courting and finding out things than to 
be married and fighting out things. 

E. That is a fact, but the philosopher’s philos¬ 
ophy is often greater and truer than the philoso¬ 
pher. 

P. You might have said always and not have 
erred much. 

E. Plato, how fair! how reasonable! But 
oh! how cold. 

P. Reason cold? Never! Never! It is as 
tender and more judicious than love. I admit I 
am not infallible in reason, but if I wholly lived 
up to my reason I would be a greater man, and 
suppose the rest of humanity have the same plea 
to make. 

E. Plato, I like to hear your philosophy, and 
yet I do not. I like to be in your presence, and 
yet I do not. You are a great man, and yet to 
me you are not. You have said nothing that has 


192 


Signal Thoughts. 


offended me, and I trust that what I have said 
has been received in the same spirit it was given. 
But we are to part. The time for my departure as 
a missionary is soon at hand, and I trust we can 
bid one another farewell * * * * * * at least as 

friends. 

P. Most assuredly Eunice. 

E. Soliloquy—My heart is vocal with thought, 
but reason says my mouth must remain sealed. 
My heart feels as though it would burst, but rea¬ 
son says it dare not. I admire, I honor, I cherish 
and Ilove Plato as no other woman on earth ever 
has or can. And yet he does not appear to know it, 
and I dare not tell him, for it would be received 
as weakness. I have appeared strong and it 
might be that love would have melted his heart. 
But I could not venture it, lest I would have failed 
and lost his friendship. I see in Plato a great 
man, a philosopher, a true and noble spirit—a 
man whose reason is so clear that it supports 
revelation. Of course he is human, and I sup¬ 
pose has his faults, but he appears to have every¬ 
thing that is true and noble. He is too great to be 
very little in anything. He excels my ideal of a 
man, and I venture the thought that one day 
some woman will have the honor of being his bride. 
Oh! the thought of it, and not to think that I 
am the one—is death! But I must not shrink 
like this. There are other men besides Plato. 


Philosophical Courtship. 193 

Yes, but no other Plato. There is but one Plato. 
And there never will be another. It grieves me, 
but I cannot allow myself to worry. Until heaven 
will reveal the fact, he will probably never know 
how I love him. It may be that I am unreason¬ 
able to expect Plato to reciprocate to my love. 
It may be I am wholly unworthy of his favor and 
love; but if I were his I would flee, for his sake, 
from realities to grand possibilities. To me, 
Plato would be heaven; without him—hell. No! 
It must not be so. That is child’s talk. Rather 
without Plato earth is robbed of all its riches— 
this must not be—Plato has forgotten me and I 
must forget Plato. God still lives and what more 
ought I to ask. Why if he don’t want me—ac¬ 
cording to his own philosophy—1 guess I don’t 
want him. I will become a missionary simply to 
get as far away from Plato as space will allow. 
But I am afraid space will have no effect on 
thought. I fear space and time are not great 
•enough to erase from my mind the fond remem¬ 
brance of Plato. I wish it were so, and yet I 
don’t. I don’t desire to forget him as a philoso¬ 
pher, but as a lover I wish I could. What makes 
me talk so. I don’t want to think about it. I will 
worship God; His philosophy is certainly equal 
to Plato’s. I have seen Plato and felt his pres¬ 
ence as I never have seen or felt God. But this 
is child’s talk—this is a conflict, and if there is to 


194 


Signal Thoughts . 


be a heroic act, Eunice must be the heroine, and 
now I will resolve to forget it all. It is hence¬ 
forth God and Eunice versus Plato—not to kill 
but to forget and live. I don’t propose to fill a 
broken-hearted grave; but clothe myself in a mis¬ 
sionary robe and die in a halo of glory as did the 
victors of old. Plato may not be mine, but life 
is, and may God grant more. But Plato—No! 

P. For some time, Eunice, you have been 
looking as though you were wrestling in disagree¬ 
able life. What is the trouble? 

E. I have. It is no pleasant task to leave 
friends and become a missionary. 

P. I suppose not, when do you expect to 
leave? 

E. Soon. 

P. Soliloquy.—There are worse girls than 
Eunice, and mighty few that are better. I see in 
Eunice true greatness. She has good ideas of life; 
well in reason, strong in virtue and pleasing in 
disposition—her simplicity is remarkable for its 
strength of character. In fact she is a woman 
and not an artificial composition of nothingness. 
She is about as near my ideal as I can ever hope 
to see, and why not take advantage of such a 
golden opportunity, and extend to her the hand 
of proposal and see if it will be accepted. I am 
satisfied it will—but let me see! I have said a 
great many things to test her that may have of- 


Philosophical Courtship . • 


195 


fended her to the degree of refusal. I told her I 
never spoke the word love, but I can get around 
that all right. I am satisfied Eunice is just the 
girl. If she accepts I need never fear that I 
have made a mistake. But supposing she does not 
accept; that is where the rub comes in * * * * * 
well! if she does not, that leaves me out. I don’t 
want anyone that does not want me—that is my 
theory. I have enough sense not to want the 
girl that does not want me, even if I knew she was 
too good for me. There is no risk to run, even 
if there were it would be a cowardly act not to 
venture when success means such a creature as 
Eunice—a perfect image of God and at the same 
time possessed of the beauty of the angels. She 
is a greater woman than she thinks herself to be, 
thus making herself doubly great. It may be 
Plato is not worthy the name of husband, but he 
certainly would attempt to be; and that is more 
than many men would do. I am satisfied that I 
know what I am doing, and I am going to do it. 
I will propose. The question cannot be delayed. 

* -3f * * # * 

E. Plato, I will leave in a few weeks and may 
be in a few days. • 

P. Eunice, do you remember I once said I 
never spoke the word love? 

E. I do. 

P. It may be you did not understand me. I 


196 


Signal Thoughts . 


did not mean that I never loved, but that that 
love that must call itself love in order to be 
known is mighty poor love. God might have 
sent sinners volumes of revelation filled with 
words of love, but what would that have amounted 
to in comparison to sending His only begotten 
son? And as to my opinion of man and woman, 
—you can’t compare them because great souls 
are not comparable. 

E. That sounds more like Plato’s life. 

P. Eunice, before you leave to take up your 
missionary work, I want to discuss one more 
question with you. 

E. Some more philosophy—all right. 

P. No not philosophy, but more vital and one 
that requires more deliberation than any philoso¬ 
phical question. And when you answer it— 

E. Do you think I can answer it? 

P. Yes madame, you and no other. 

E. Very well. 

P. And when you answer it, answer it with¬ 
out mental reservation and without fear or feel¬ 
ing. If you answer it negatively let it be with 
reason. If it should be in the affirmative let it be 
given in the spirit of the questioner—with reason 
and love. Eunice, the question is freighted with 
mighty import. Thought has been put upon it 
and if it be properly answered, thought must 


Philosophical Courtship . 197 

answer it. I am not an angel—I am not a devil, 
but a man struggling to attain the grand possi¬ 
bilities of man. I now make a proposition. Yes, 
I request that you honor me by agreeing to be 
the bride of my life. 

E. Plato— 

P. You need not answer now. You may if 
you choose take time. 

E. Plato, that is answered. It has been an¬ 
swered and you knew it. The question is unde- 
batable and needs no time for choice—thanks to 
you, and thanks to heaven .for you—yes; Plato, 
yes! But Plato I never expected it. I never, 
never dreamed of it; though I confess I prayed 
that it might be so, but I had no faith in my own 
prayer. Plato, I cannot do justice to the word 
“yes,” but I will try so to live to you that heaven 
and not I, must write it in the book of life. 

P. What about the missionary work? 

E. I, in the name of your high philosophy, 
will be a missionary in the suburbs of ignorance. 
P. What day will it be? Name it Eunice. 

E. You Plato. 

P. No, you! 

E. Any day, just so it is one day. 

p - ) 

& >- Exit. 

E. I 

Muse.—No kiss but a blessed union. 


igB 


Signal Thoughts . 


ELEMENTS OF TRUE SUOOESS. 


The placing of that little but wonderful being, 
called man, within the limitless realm among the 
things of infinitude, was the crowning act of an 
omnipotent God. Heaven must have had on its 
best livery; justice and mercy for the first time 
kissed each other; trinity in unity spake;—result 
man. It was a declaration of power compared 
to which that of the incomprehensible universe 
is as nothing. Infinite reservation was called 
upon as never before in order that one product 
might be able to know its producer. God stepped 
as it were with man into space, and silently with¬ 
drawing left him to his own solitude amid the 
vicissitudes of life, but possessed of that high and 
noble aspiration,—success. Philosophically man’s 
creation was not complete until he was moved by 
the power of his own thought through the spirit 
of success. 

Were a definition of success attempted your 
practical experience would arise and condemn it as 
too narrow and too lifeless. We all know what 
it means. Were all the languages, living and 
dead, brought before you and choice of 
words given, and by that choice you become 



Elements of True Success. 


199 


possessed of its realities you would intuitively 
seize that shining word—success. We are all on 
a march for it. We lay our plans and map out 
our campaigns to seize the immortal prize. What 
calls the farmer from his easy repose into the in¬ 
tense heat of mid-summer, but the silent voice of 
success ? Why that sleepless activity of the busi¬ 
ness man? Let success answer. The student 
burns his midnight oil that success may crown 
his work. The lawyer works all night that his 
next day’s plea may draw a successful verdict 
from the jury. The doctor, the mechanic, the 
preacher, all are its seekers and sometimes its 
mad pursuers. 

There has never yet lived a man so dead but 
that at some time he has felt the divine impulse 
of success. He who denies its presence is too 
little an object for. consideration, too dead for 
burial and one whose existence can be accounted 
for only by a total sacrifice of space. It is the 
polar star shining in the firmament of civilization 
as the stars in the heavens. It leads man on 
from conquest to conquest; from victory unto 
victory, and from life unto life. He loves to see 
his work clothed and crowned with it. It is an 
ambitious act but it needs not to be robbed of 
virtue. There is nothing ignoble, nothing dis¬ 
honorable about it. If it be true success it is in 
harmony with the divine disposition of heaven. 


200 Signal Thoughts . 

It is a divine injunction to make life nothing less 
than a success, thereby commanding the respect 
of man and God. 

But it has a substitute the world calls success. 
It is a bright and shining imitation, but falser than 
fiction and more detrimental than false; less than 
a bubble on the sea and fraught with a greater 
danger than destruction,—causing the politician 
to sacrifice his character, the statesman his good 
name and even the preacher the gospel of truth. 
Napoleon with oriental superstition bowed before 
its shrine; worshipping with the devotion of a 
Hindoo mother, was crowned with the success of 
the world. But he purchased it with the blood 
and money of impoverished France, and forfeited 
it by six years of exile on the isolated island of 
St. Helena. The schoolboy may ask, are you 
not going to call Napoleon a great man? No! 
He was a powerful man but not a truly great man. 
One whose example is to be studied but not imi¬ 
tated; an intellectual giant but in moral courage 
a dwarf. A man of complete supremacy of will. 
Starting upon a famous march he sent ahead his 
surveyor to ascertain the possibilities of crossing 
the Alps. He received this report; “barely pos¬ 
sible.” Think of it, “ barely possible.” Many a 
man would have recoiled, shrunk from it, given 
up in utter despair. But Napoleon said, “very 
well,” and gave the command “ advance.” He 


201 


Elements of True Success . 

laughed at impossibilities. He desired obstacles 
to remove and mountains to scale that his power 
might be displayed. He had energy, tact and 
perseverance;—elements of success, but not of 
true success. He was great in one respect; but 
in another so little, that in the sight of truth and 
principle he is wholly little,—standing as an ex¬ 
ample of ambition without devotion. Elizabeth, 
Queen of England, was a woman of rare ability, 
but defective in character. History is crowded 
with similar personages whose ability and knowl¬ 
edge will arise at the bar of judgment and con¬ 
demn them, as their life will not make one plea 
of innocence but many of guilt. Condemned be¬ 
fore judged; judged before dead and dead before 
burial. Well could they say with Cardinal Wool- 
sey, “ Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate 
'ye.” 

And yet history has a solid phalanx of men 
and women who have acquired success on the 
line of principle, truth and virtue. Jerome, Lati¬ 
mer and Ridley rejected the honor of the world 
and patiently for the sake of principle withstood 
the torture of the stake. Gregory said, “He loved 
righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore he 
was in exile.” Luther was a star of more bril¬ 
liance than a firmament of Napoleons. Luthers 
life said let the world criticise and condemn me, 
but not principle and truth. Napoleons said 
14 


202 Signal Thoughts. 

give me the world’s honor and let principle and 
truth go. Give me the historian’s eulogy and let 
virtue return to heaven from whence it came. 
Luther comes down through the cycles of the 
ages as a great man. Napoleon robbed by his 
own hand of the title. 

But you need not remove the dusty volumes 
in the archives of antiquity to behold true great¬ 
ness. Stand upon the grand foundation of your 
own possibilities; view not the reflected image 
of others, but the personal acquisitions that await 
you. Success is a thing acquired not granted; a 
gain, not a gift. As much the inheritance of the 
cabin as the palace. Kings and those in whose 
veins circulates royal blood of ancestry have pre¬ 
ference no more. There is no royal highway to 
true greatness. The road is graded and paved 
by the hand of energy, perseverance and integ¬ 
rity—the three primary elements of character. 
You need not princely favor. There is enough 
inspiration in the grand possibilities of man’s na¬ 
ture to raise him from the lowest depths of apathy 
to a plain of set determination. We are too in¬ 
active. We sleep; we slumber too much, taking 
life too much as a dream and not enough as a 
reality. In the words of the poet; “ I slept and 
dreamed that life was beauty, I awoke and found 
that life was duty.” How few have reached the 
stern and solemn realities of life. How many 


203 


Elements of True Success. 

flit across the stage of action as though life were 
a mere drama. Many foolishly desire the re¬ 
wards of a noble life; and in their fond imagi¬ 
nation expect the doors of heaven to swing wide 
open and the angels to greet them when they 
have not fulfilled one command. Energy is the 
key that unlocks the storehouse of nature; per¬ 
severance throws open the blinds and integrity 
lets in the smiling sunshine of heaven. Work 
is the fundamental law of reward. It is heaven’s 
first interrogatory. 

England’s great color painter was asked, “what 
is your secret? ” He answered, “ I have no secret. 
I have worked for it.” Yet they tell us some 
men are born great. It is false. Again they say 
some have greatness thrust upon them. It is 
not true. It is not the pretension of Satan, but 
the reward of heaven; not the sluggishness of 
the sluggard satisfied, but the efforts of the vigi¬ 
lant recompensed. Give the world directed en¬ 
ergy and it will convert itself into heaven. Give 
heaven misdirected energy and it will change it¬ 
self into hell. Action produces positive results; 
passiveness negative positives. 

God never woke a man to send him on a mis¬ 
sion. Putnam left his plow and defended his 
country. The angel that spoke to Gideon, “Je- 
hova is with thee,” found him thrashing out corn 
Elisha was plowing when the mantle of prophecy 


204 Signal Thoughts. 

fell upon his shoulders. Peter, James and John 
were fishermen when receiving their commission. 
Moses was called to the heights of Mt. Sinai be¬ 
fore receiving the decalogue. Putnam left his. 
plow and defended his country. It is the: 
toilers in life’s great battle field and not the 
lords that receive the imperishable laurels; the 
servant and not the master. The chemist in 
the laboratory of nature and not the visitor 
finds the elements. It is by entering upon the 
various excursions, and following up the avenues, 
of life that the pathetic, the beautiful and the 
sublime appear in all their grandeur, and the 
incomprehensible apprehended. There is no 
legitimate standing place in the whole world 
for a moral coward or a sluggard. All nature 
speaks against him; the planets in their ceaseless 
journey cry “arise and go to thy duty.” Yea! It 
is even the voice of the dead who slumber. 
Finite man must labor continually in order that 
he may have even a claim upon high mercy. It 
is not he who starts with a glare upon a lumin¬ 
ous ascension; and, pausing a moment upon the 
pinnacle of fame, only to descend with a flutter 
to the horizon of destruction and oblivion; but 
he who without hovering remains poised upon 
the wing of industry. There is a class of aspir¬ 
ants who hold public opinion the criterion of 
truth, thinking their life a failure without the pub- 


205 


Elements of True Success. 

lie’s gaze and laudation, dying to receive and right 
quickly the honors of the world; the spirit of the 
politician but not of the statesman. Many a 
promising bud is blighted and withered by the 
tyranny of public opinion. Washington, Jack- 
son, Lincoln, Grant and Garfield were not men 
of sudden flight, but plodders on the hard road of 
persverance by way of the farm, rail pile and 
canal boat, until the nation’s palace heartily 
greeted them and embellished their names with 
wisdom and patriotism as the fathers, the eman¬ 
cipators and preservers of a grand and noble 
country. The names of such stand as living 
monuments to industry and integrity. If you ex¬ 
pect the world to erect a towering monument in 
remembrance of you, stop in your imagination, 
and erect a pillar of living character to the com¬ 
monwealth, and you will have done that which 
posterity cannot do. Character is the only thing 
that will withstand the evil corrodings of the 
world; imperishable amid the perishable; proud 
in its attainments and noble in its nature, it re¬ 
sists the Satanic inquiry, “Ought you not to 
have recognition;” with the words of Confuscius: 
“ I am not concerned that I have no office; I am 
concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am 
not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be 
worthy to be known.” He laid not his trophies 
at the altaY of public opinion, but at the redeemed 


206 


Signal Thoughts . 

altar of honest efforts. He said, “the wise will 
never intermit his labor. If another succeeds 
with one effort he will use a hundred.” As it is 
the silent force that moves the planets in their or¬ 
bits, so it is continual effort, without pomp and 
parade that moves man in his cycles on toward 
perfection. The heights of Mt. Blank are not 
reached by stereoscopic views, but by the slow 
and steady tread of persistency. Energy, perse¬ 
verance and integrity is the trinity of man’s suc¬ 
cess; but the greatest of these is integrity. “ An 
honest man is the noblest work of God”; a pic¬ 
ture of heaven. Standing in a class of his own 
he admits of no comparison. 

Rectitude is the noblest element in man’s na¬ 
ture, giving vigor and tone to all the rest. As 
energy is heaven’s first interrogatory, integrity is 
its last. When all others will have been answered, 
that solemn and reverent question,—honesty, will 
come in the name of justice and not mercy. Up¬ 
rightness is a thing that needs not speculation. It 
is a certainty. Judas Iscariot knew that he was 
a traitor as well as did his Master. He knew he 
was guilty and his thirty pieces of silver though 
voiceless condemned him. 

If the success of the world requires you to bar¬ 
ter away your conscience resent it; take up arms 
and oppose it. You want nothing of momentary 
glory; only those wreaths and laurels that will re- 


Elements of True Success. 207 

main untarnished. Follow the principle of truth, 
and if it leads you to the cup of hemlock drink 
it as did Socrates. If to the wilderness, enter. If 
to the lion’s den, go in as did Daniel. If to the 
cross, carry it as did Christ. Follow duty as the 
marines does his compass, and you will ever be 
aright on the great sea of morality. In the words 
of Shakespeare, “To thine own self be true, and 
it must follow as the night the day, thou canst 
not then be false to any man.” The majestic tem¬ 
ple of character is inhabited only by whom it is 
erected; and when destroyed the occupant to his 
shame must claim the debris. He who leaves 
the domain if his own soul is beyond the redemp¬ 
tion of Calvary. The allurements of the social 
and financial circles may promise you broader 
fields and greener pastures, but nothing but sandy 
deserts await you. 

We are not surprised at the ideas and lives of 
some when we have learned as to their associates 
and favorite authors. We take upon ouselves 
the greatness or littleness of our associates and 
book companions. Study the lives of such men 
as Washington and Lincoln, of Longfellow and 
Emerson, and imitate them. Associate with such 
persons and you will become great in spite of 
your own littleness. Drink at the well at which 
they drank and your ideas of principle and truth 
will become nourished by its waters. Follow 


208 


Signal Thoughts . 


Shakespeare in his highest strains and he will 
take you to the uttermost avenues, revealing life 
in all its phases and in all its grandeur; taking you 
as high as highest heaven, or if you choose as 
low as lowest hell. There is no stream or rivulet 
of life but what he has launched his boat upon, 
and sounded its depths and viewed its shores. A 
broader and more varied mind the world has yet 
to see. Had his age demanded the philosophical 
as it did the dramatical, he would have given to 
posterity a boon transcending that of his come¬ 
dies and tragedies. He was able to supply any 
want; equal to any demand; a sphynx in the in¬ 
tellectual world. Again embark with Wordsworth 
on his excursion—that noble-hearted and whole- 
souled man who picked up the last threads of 
pathos and sincerity. Accompany Milton on his 
celestial flights. Look down the descensions of 
Dante that you may follow Milton more closely. 
Clasp hands with Job for his honesty. Read Paul 
and sympathize with him; reason with him, pray 
with him and you will become as was Paul. But 
the life that is to be imitated in all is none less 
than He who was pierced and died upon the cross. 
All others have their imperfections; He had all 
perfection. 

Amid all this who dares put a premium upon 
licentiousness or venture an estimate upon the re¬ 
wards of industry. There is nothing in life but 


209 


Elements of True Success. 

what is hidden; even that something you call self 
awaits for its revelation the hand of industry and 
perseverance. 

We are by nature subject to work. Oppor¬ 
tunity puts on the harness; duty hooks the traces, 
and your eternal welfare gives the command on¬ 
ward. Go where you may, stand where you can, 
work is suggested; yea! more, commanded unto 
you. Horace Mann says it was appointed at 
creation. Even God in his infinite resources la¬ 
bors, and instead of heaven being a place of eter¬ 
nal rest, it is a place of ceaseless activity. There 
is not enough grace in all heaven to save one 
lazy soul. Throw off the garb of inactivity. Put 
on the mantle of action; shoulder the arms of 
eternal vigilance and all things await you. Life 
begins without a victory to grace its mission, 
but its end may be decked with laurel wreaths; 
conquest at its feet and noble victory perched up¬ 
on its brow. 


210 


Signal Thoughts. 


AN OBJECTIVE POINT. 

A study of humanity reveals many aimless souls 
amid the turbulent and angry waves of a bound¬ 
less sea of life. The myriad of planets, without 
jar or quiver, follow through space their destined 
course. Fixity is the fundamental and orderly 
principle of the physical realm. The mighty rush 
of worlds in their orbits produce no interference, 
for each is moving ultimately. The soul does 
not move. It does not alter position or change 
place. It acts on the line of purpose. A lazy 
soul may live without a purpose, but an active 
one cannot. A great soul must have a great 
purpose. A grand soul must have a grand pur¬ 
pose. God would have been a robber to have 
created man not capable of purpose. The mind 
intuitively craves an objective point of being. It 
can rest best when it knows that the morrow is 
filled with pleasant duty. Intellectual activity 
must have purpose or death. Destroy and an¬ 
nihilate mind, but do not take from it the power 
of purpose. One moment of anxious life without 
purpose is hell; two moments, hell compounded; 
three moments, hell confounded; and so on fol¬ 
lowing a geometrical progression of infernal 
restlessness. 


21 l 


An Objective Point . 

Purpose is written on the first page of human 
history; without it there would be no historian and 
no history. It created kingdoms, empires and 
nations. It gathered money, called armies and 
formed governments. It likewise dethroned kings, 
revolutionized systems and exterminated races. 
Religions and theories have been produced from 
a desire for something objective. Mind creates 
purpose and purpose reacts and directs energy. 
Phtah-hotep, four thousand years ago, wrote a 
moral treatise. Confucius, five hundred B. C, 
gave a moral code. Socrates, in the streets of 
Athens, taught the youths of his day. Plato 
philosophized. Aeschylus wrote his great drama. 
Aristotle reasoned, and Alexander mustered his 
armies in battle array. Solon legislated. Draco 
tyrannized and Pericles temporized. Hannibal 
invaded and Caesar conquered. Rome had its 
jurisprudence and Judea its Christianity. Intent 
was the instigator and fashioner of ancient history. 
Purpose was cradled with humanity and it has 
ever been its boon companion. 

A purpose led Cqlumbus across an unmarked 
sea to a new continent, and a purpose brought 
hither the Pilgrims. A purpose led Luther to 
Worms. A purpose led Jerome, Wycliff and 
Melanchthon. When the faggots were blazing 
high, a purpose made Ridley and Latimer stand 
firm at the stake. A purpose made a Knox and 


212 


Signal Thoughts . 


a Wesley; and when Christ hanged upon the 
cross a purpose was fulfilled. How easily is 
death conquered by a noble purpose and the grave 
robbed of its inmate. 

But there are individuals void of purpose,— 
intellectual blanks to purpose. Persons that exist, 
but do not live; that move but do not act. Intre- 
gal ciphers in the numeration of creation. What 
a pitable object! what a sad spectacle! what a 
deplorable picture is man; once the image of his 
maker, now without a noble purpose. What 
means this great crowd of loafers upon our streets, 
if it does not mean men without an object? A 
man with a great object to be attained cannot 
stand still. A soul without a purpose is a beggar, 
even if it be robed in the nobleness of its past 
attainments. Greatness spends its force some¬ 
where. Virtue will have an outlet. Littleness 
stands still, and vice suicides. The peace, ease and 
comfort of an indifferent mind is the peace, ease and 
comfort of the beast of the field. It is not folly 
to be wise even if ignorance is bliss. An object 
that is not greater than the means through which 
it travels is not worthy of the name. A happy 
object can forget disagreeable and unpleasant 
means, but a happy means can never forget an 
unhappy object. Humanity is too much inclined 
to spend its force in the intermediate phases of 
life. It has always been difficult for the individual 


An Objective Point. 


213 

to mirror the objective point. Souls are dwarfed 
and distorted because they are not working in 
the phase of ultimate designs. Philosophy for 
six thousand years, and Christianity for nearly 
two thousand, have been teaching the importance 
of the ultimatum. The objective point of life 
ought first be determined and then let every 
avenue and channel of energy be directed 
toward it. Let humanity see the mightiness, the 
awfulness and grandeur of its design; and man 
will flee to it for shelter as did the dove of the 
ark. 

A high purpose is all that heathendom lacks of 
being Christendom. And a low purpose is all 
that Christendom lacks of being heathendom. 
Between a purpose and no purpose give us pur¬ 
pose. A purpose that leads to destruction is 
preferable to drifting there to find out the course 
pursued. Stable indifference is the barrier on 
which many are hanging and lashing to pieces 
the possibilities of their better nature. Lack of 
motive characterizes many individuals. A school 
boy without a purpose will never become a stu¬ 
dent; he is a drag to the school and a contention 
to the teacher. He will sit, and sleep and dream 
his time away, and when time and age say enough, 
he quits. And on the same line he begins work¬ 
ing out his allotted manhood and death finds him 
no better than life left him. 


214 Signal Thoughts. 

But as a rule man has a purpose. He has 
located what he calls the objective point of life. 
And he is directing all his energies toward it, and 
zealously following all the objective means that 
lead to it. He is beckoned on by the inspiration 
of the motive, and whoever or whatever lies in 
his pathway, is deemed his enemy and he at once 
turns on the tactics of the survival of the fittest. 
He has the latitude and longitude of his objective 
point, and if the road that leads to it needs be 
paved, he will pave it. If the channels leading 
to it needs be watered with the tears of innocence, 
some one must shed them. If its waters need be 
made crimson with the blood of immortal men, 
some one must bleed and die. 

Much has been said about the great universal 
conflict of nature. How the fundamental princi¬ 
ples of matter battled with one another until order 
proceeded from chaos. How one geological age 
produced its successor—the earth the result of a 
great elementary conflict. And when animal life 
came upon the stage, another great conflict en¬ 
sued—the survival of the fittest being the supreme 
law. The larger fish living upon the smaller, the 
fierceness of beastly nature upon the timidity of an¬ 
imal instinct. The strong increased their strength 
by feeding upon the weakness of the weak. 
Nature appears to be in a universal conflict with 
nature. But we cannot look to the changes of 


An Objective Point. 


2I 5 


nature and say it is a conflict. It is the path of 
design. The present state of matter and the 
nature of instinct is the result of order. There is 
no strife in the universe of matter or nature. 
1 here is no conflict save the conflict of purpose— 
mind against mind. Not in the realm of order, 
but in the sphere of freedom is strife made possi¬ 
ble. Not until man came with his awful existence 
was conflict possible, and with him came disorder, 
rebellion and crime. 

History from beginning to end is one bloody 
carnage. It is strife untold and misery unspeaka¬ 
ble. It has no peace. It is simply a treaty signed 
to become a vantage ground for a bloodier conflict. 
There has never yet been a treaty signed that 
remained perpetual. The day of savage warfare 
may be no more, but antagonism is no less vital. 
The enemy may not be seen, but the adversary 
is no less keenly felt. The captain may be dead, 
but the opposer is not. The history of the nine¬ 
teenth century and the unwritten history of all 
times have been nothing but a universal conflict 
of purpose. 

The opposition of the objective view of man¬ 
kind is the philosophy of past wars and present 
contention. It is a lazy man that does not 
endeavor to reach his ideal. At present the 
different races number about one billion and a 
half, and if each individual were ask to define the 


Signal Thoughts . 


216 

ultimate design of life, probably no two would 
exactly agree. Difference of opinion is about as 
old as mankind. Man pictures out the object of 
his highest desire and starts in pursuit, and he 
who would lay a fiber of opposition in his way is 
deemed a bitter enemy. The great conflict of 
this age, and the greatest that can befall any peo¬ 
ple, is the conflict of objective views. Some 
epicurian like, are living only to gratify the desire 
of pleasure, and the teacher of duty is branded, 
nonsense. Some have no other object than sim¬ 
ply to decorate and ornament their person, thereby 
satisfying the desire of beauty. Some so live for 
self that they are ever criticising the contributions 
of philanthropy. Some have dedicated their 
lives to fame, and if it is not granted, they feel 
like a sworn enemy toward their fellow citizens. 
Popularity is a withering wind that brings no virtue, 
and carries away no vice. Some’s chief delight 
is to make beasts of themselves and name 
themselves pugilists. And some so live as if 
nature could work out the design of person¬ 
ality. 

But the greater proportion of mankind has 
staked its all on wealth; not as a means, which is 
perfectly legitimate, but as an ultimate object— 
which is not right. The great epedimic of this 
age is wealth,—it is sworn fealty to money, and 
though brother perishes, principle suffer, and 



An Objective Point . 


217 

truth exhort; it is nothing—it is money. Because 
of difference of purpose and difference of means 
to the same purpose, man is contending with man. 
The legislative halls are racking their brains on 
the great social and commercial evils of the day. 
They have legislated and they may even tyrannize, 
but they cannot harmonize individual effort until 
unity of purpose is reached. The philosophy of 
the situation is, unify objective views, thereby 
preventing friction of effort. Men bitterly con¬ 
tend for their ideas and objects and afterwards 
change them. The ultimatum of life does not 
change, and when society has it, and not until 
then will peace reign supreme. 

What is the ultimate object of life? To live? 
No! To seek pleasure? No! To be happy and 
rejoice? No! To become great and have nations 
worship at its shrine? No! To possess armies 
and have the nations of the world tremble? No! 
To acquire great wealth and command many ser¬ 
vants? No! To show what God could do? No! 
To populate heaven? No! To glorify God? 
No! The object of man is the full and perpetual 
intellectual, moral and spiritual aggrandizement 
of his own soul, thereby glorifying his Maker. 
The object of man is man, and nothing but a lost 
soul can defeat that object. 

Many seeing the high duty of life, make every¬ 
thing subservient, and with an accumulated and 
15 



2 I 8 


Signal Thoughts. 

accelerated momentum more toward the just 
standard of man. There is nothing great but life. 
Sum up responsibility and it leaves but your own. 
Each individual is all of humanity and himself 
besides. Every epoch of history reveals talent— 
a thing of need, and talent shows the necessity of 
a purpose. When talent is in advance of purpose, 
sin is apparent. When purpose is too far in the 
lead, superstition follows. Some lack talent more 
than purpose, and some purpose more than talent. 
Christianity is in need of talent, and the world in 
need of purpose. Amid jeweled sincerity error 
is doing its blightening work, and amid brightest 
ability, sin its damning effects. The institutions 
of intellect and morality should be built together, 
and then the revolutions and reformations will be 
a continual order of progression. 

The divinity of the revelation: “ It doeth not yet 
appear what we shall be,” is apparent to human 
experience. The infant in the cradle has not an 
idea of childhood, and the child fails to grasp the 
conceptions of manhood. It does not properly 
appear to one state of mind what the next will be; 
only the previous states are subject to analysis. 

Look at mind—the feebleness of the infant and 
the maturity and strength of developed manhood. 
It requires but a few years to take man out of the 
cradle and establish him on the highway of ad¬ 
vanced experience. If fifty years or three score 



An Objective Point, 219 

and ten can disclose so much of the wonderful¬ 
ness of mind, what will millions do? If this brief 
time allows such awful revelation of soul, what 
will eternity do? But mind degeneration is as 
strong and as rapid as mind evolution. The full 
beauty and grandeur of heaven is not in sight, 
nor the mental degeneration and moral depravity 
of hell, not yet seen. There is a fixity to purpose 
that is unheeded and that brings dire results. 
Wonderfulness exists in the harmony of law, and 
awfulness in transgression. Whither is the objec¬ 
tive point leading? Stability of habit is holding, 
like fate, the reins of destiny. Man is a free 
moral agent, but he makes but few decided changes 
in the course of life. 

Put not off the time for the cultivation of high 
desires. The most palatable food is often the 
most detrimental to the stomach; likewise there 
are mental dyspeptics. Unpalatable diet becomes 
palatable by adaptation; so unsought life becomes 
agreeable by experience. Mortality may shift 
and change, but immortality in its freedom will 
sooner or later forge its fetters and draw its seals, 
and fix its eternal state. Nature must have a 
spokesman or it will speak for itself. Law uncon¬ 
trolled is its own. The human will is free, but 
infinite law holds a license of obedience that must 
be paid; free as to action, but as to the law of 
result no freer than fate. 


220 


Signal Thoughts . 


The great cry of this age ought to be, whither 
is the objective point directing? How is will, 
that all of man, commanding the faculties of mind ? 
Is it in harmony with progression and morality of 
mind, or is it in opposition? Will is the only 
stubborn thing in the world. Freedom the only 
dangerous thing. Before man’s creation there 
was no danger; since it is all danger. Constant 
fear of an immortal soul hopelessly stranding on 
the shore of eternity. It is awful; thought hates 
to dwell upon it, but it is possible. If man can¬ 
not, if he choose, be damned eternally there is 
nothing in free will. Life and death throttled one 
another in the garden of Eden, and who can tell 
when the soul’s warfare will wholly cease? Life 
is apt to one day leave death to death’s own dark 
scene. Life is the object of life, and nothing but 
more of its own satisfies it; and nothing but abso¬ 
lute death can satisfy the nature of death. 

If you want the wheels of progress to turn 
more rapidly; if you want the spindles of time to 
increase their velocity; if you want to see the 
bright light of the millennium, give mankind a 
a noble purpose. It is well to outgrow ideas and 
rise above previous conceptions, but purpose 
ought never recede. Altering the objective view 
of life is death to all the past, and the present is 
always better with a noble past living back of it. 
Giving the world a noble purpose gives it salvation. 




















